544 General Notes. [May, 7 
sect pests, and has placed sufficient sums of money at their dis- 
posal to enable them to visit different parts of the country, and 
thus to give to their work a thoroughness it could not otherwise 
have had. This is as it should be, and no intelligent person now 
doubts the usefulness of the Entomological Department at Wash- 
ington. į 
But if the investigation of injurious insects be considered a 
government duty, will not the same reasoning show it to 
equally its duty to provide for the similar investigation of the 
numerous parasitic fungi which injure and often entirely destroy 
farm and garden crops? The damage annually wrought by the 
fungi is but little if any less than that by insects. Take, for 
example, but one of the many affecting wheat and oat crops, viz, 
the rust, and we find that through it alone the country loses every 
year many millions of dollars; how many millions we hardly 
dare venture even to surmise, lest we be accused of exaggeration. 
However, as the annual wheat crop of the State of Iowa, is about 
forty millions of bushels, a reduction of but one tenth on account 
of the rust, would amount to a loss of four million dollars. 
When we remember that it is a very common occurrence for the 
injury from this cause alone to be fully a quarter or a third, a 
1 loss must be 
placed considerably higher rather than lower. Add now the annual 
affect wheat, oats, barley and Indian corn, and we have t0 
United States a sum aggregating at the very lowest estimate 
allowable, from fifty to one hundred millions of dollars. 
But the losses are not confined to our staple cereal crops. 
d attacking al 
which unfit them for food and hasten their decay. And the vey : 
d is infested 
timber of which our houses and barns are constructe 
by species which cause decay and destruction. It 1s needless of 
specify further. We have in the parasitic fungi and in ~~ 
the saprophytic ones, a host of enemies which annually destroy 
immense values. Is it not one of the duties of the Dep se 
of Agriculture at Washington to undertake the thorough, che 
exhaustive study of these enemies? In what way heirs: 
department do more good to the great agricultural inter 
the country than by inaugurating such a work?—C. F: 2 
Boranicat Nores—In the March Grevillea M. C. Co 
scribes and figures a new Gasteromycete (Cyclode 
from Ohio. In the same journal the editor describes D a 
a curious case of a Vaucheria with distinctly septate fil charac- 
All doubts as to its identity were removed by finding te f 
teristic odgonia and antheridia. He strongly suspects 
that under : e 
ses 
i 
a 
