152 
done is to diminish as much as possible their disastreus effects and 
render their injury supportable to the colonists. He considered that 
there could be no profit in sending out from the moist jars of the labora- 
tory the spores which, in the hope of some individuals, would deliver 
Algeria from the scourge of the locusts. 
A NOVEL MODE OF USING DISEASE GERMS. 
In many directions the commercial enterprise of the French people 
is making itself felt. We have elsewhere referred to the striking 
advances which have been made in France in the making of insecticide 
machinery and the object of the present writing is to call the attention 
of our readers to a new branch of entomological commerce just insti- 
tuted bya French firm. We have received a circular from Fribourg & 
Hesse, 26 Rue des Ecoles, Paris, offering for sale culture tubes for the 
destruction of the White Grub. ‘The circular gives an introductory 
statement to the effect that the recent researches of Prillieux, Dela- 
croix, and Giard have established the fact that there exists a specific 
vegetable parasite of the White Grub which destroys it. Following 
the learned methods of Pasteur, Messrs. Fribourg & Hesse have under- 
taken the artificial production of this parasite—Botrytis tenella—upon 
a vast scale and offer to agriculturists tubes containing the spores, by 
the aid of which they will be able to utilize the discovery. They guar- 
antee their cultures to be capable of communicating the disease to sey- 
eral hundred worms. Trial tubes are advertised at 50 centimes, while 
the commercial article costs 6 francs. 
The following methods of employment are recommended: 
(1) Take about a hundred White Grubs and put them in an earthenware vessel of 
sufficiently large size, the bottom of which should be covered with a bed of earth or 
sand about a centimetre in depth and slightly moist. Sink the vessel in the ground 
in a cool shady place. 
(2) Pulverize very finely between the fingers the contents of the tube and scatter 
them over the grubs in the vessel. The fragments which will not crush between 
the fingers should be mixed with a little moist earth and scattered over the grubs. 
Every grub should be touched by the powder. 
(3) Cover the vessel with pieces of board on which wet sloth should be placed, 
or, better, wet moss. 
(4) At the end of six hours the grubs are attacked by the disease. They should be 
taken one by one and placed in different parts of the field, at a depth of about 20 
centimetres in the ground, taking care not to injure them. Put them gently in the 
soil and cover them with earth. Choose preferably the worst infested places in 
which to put the diseased grubs. 
It is a good plan to keep some of the diseased grubs from the vessel; with this in 
view put them in a flower pot with moist earth. At the end of fifteer days the grubs 
should be dead, swollen, and of a clear rosy tint. 
MORTALITY AMONG FLIES IN THE DISTRICT. 
The comparative scarcity of flies of all sorts this summer in the Dis- 
trict has been a matter of comment, whereas in neighboring towns flies 
