Sept, i, 1885.] The Australasian Scientific Magazine. 
75 
NEW ZEALAND. 
No reports to hand. 
NOUMEA. 
No reports to hand. 
THE EDITOR’S CHAIR. 
Professor C. E. Bessey, of the Iowa Agricultural College, says of the 
the corn smut in the Student's Farm Journal : — “This disease of Indian 
corn is well known to be due to a minute parasitic plant which gains access 
to the corn plant early in the life of the latter. Careful microscopical 
examinations show the parasitic growths to be present even in the lower 
joints of the corn, and they have been seen in all the intermediate parts. The 
parasite grows in the form of very minute slender threads, which penetrate 
the tissues of the corn, and thereby gain nourishment for growth. The 
threads grow until they finally reach the young kernels, where they find 
such an abundance of nourishment that they burst out into the two well 
known smutty growths, which are so common some seasons. Now these 
smutty growths are the fruiting places of the parasite. Cut open such a 
growth when it is young, and you will find it to be white and of a fibrous 
structure. A little later it begins to show dark streaks, and still later it 
begins to dissolve into a black, inky slime. The water soon evaporates 
from this slime and leaves a powdery mass, which puffs out and blows 
away with the slighest jar. This powder is made up of countless myriads 
of little black balls, called spores, which serve to reproduce these plants, 
as seed reproduce the higher plants. Now, every smutted ear left in the 
field is a seed-bed for the production of more smut the next year. It has 
been shown by experience, as well as by direct experiment, that there is 
always more smut in those fields where there had been smut the year 
before. 
The last bulletin published by the Russian Ministry of Finance gives 
some interesting information about the agricultural and commercial condi- 
tion of Western Siberia. The central region of the Obi and the Irtisch is 
noted for its magnificent pasturage and cornfields, the latter yielding 
2,200,000 tchetverts of grain in an average year. The wandering Kirghese 
tribes excel in the raising of stock, and upon the steppes bordering upon 
