172 General Notes. [ February, 
liverworts, lichens, alge and fungi. Collections are required in 
each group, thus insuring a practical acquaintance with the 
plants in their native habitats—-—In the first annual report of 
the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station, Professor Tre- 
lease gives accurate popular descriptions of the onion mold 
(Peronospora schleideniana D. By.) and the apple scab and leaf 
blight (Fusicladium dendriticum Wallroth). Both articles are 
illustrated by wood-cuts, which add materially to their value. 
Work of this kind is, in our opinion, much more valuable than 
that which usually fills the reports of these stations. We pe 
we could see more papers like Professor Trelease’s. May w 
not commend to the directors of agricultural stations the rena 
of the editor of Science in a recent number of that journal, in 
discussing the proper aim and scope of such stations: “ The great 
need of agriculture to-day is not new varieties of plants or im- 
proved breeds of animals, new methods of cultivating the soil or 
improved systems of farming; all these, and many other like 
things, are good ; but the two great wants are a better knowledge 
of principles and greater intelligence to apply them.” Dr. B. 
D. Halsted, of New York, has been elected to the chair of bot- 
any in the Iowa Agricultural College. The December Journal 
of Botany contains a fine photograph of the late George Ben- 
tham. e see it announced in English journals that transla- 
tions of De Candolle’s Origin of Cultivated Plants, and De Bary’s 
Anatomy of the Vegetative Organs of the Phanerogams and 
Ferns have recently been brought out, the former by C. Keagan 
Paul, London, and the latter by the Clarendon Press, Oxford. 
‘De Bary’s “ Vergleichende Morphologie und Biologie der 
Pilze, Mycetozoen und Bacterien has just reached us, but too 
late for further notice at this time. It is a stout volume of 558 
octavo pages and is illustrated with 198 wood-cuts. This work 
merits an early translation. The Fournal of Mycology, by J.B. 
Ellis and W. A. Kellerman is announced to appear soon. 
ENTOMOLOGY. 
EmBryoLocy or ApuipeEs.\—Witlaczil corrects many miscon- 
ceptions and adds largely to our knowledge of insect embryology. 
is researches were chiefly on the viviparous females. The 
oviparous females and the males appear late in season, and have 
much the same course of development as is here described. The 
mercegi are specially characterized by a large amount of 
1. The Egg—The egg has a peripheral part consisting of clear 
protoplasm, and a central part consisting chiefly of granulated 
yolk. The germinal vesicle with nucleus is in the central part, 
and is capable of amceboid movements. The anterior aad poste- 
By Dr. Emanuel Witlaczil, of Vienna (Zeitschrift f. Wiss. Zool., Bd. XL, 1884, 
p 559-696; an and taf. XXVIIHI-XXXIV). 
