Notes and Brief Articles 
113 
1916, Dr. Shear received a specimen of chestnut canker from Dr. 
Yamada, of the Morioka Imperial College of Agriculture and 
Forestry, who attributed his discovery of the disease to a 
familiarity with the fungus gained on a recent visit to the United 
States. Endothia radicalis is also indigenous in Japan on various 
hosts and has been confused with the true chestnut canker, which 
it very much resembles. 
An Attractive Species of Melanoleuca from Oregon 
Melanoleuca olivaceiflava Murrill, sp. nov. 
Pileus fleshy, convex to subexpanded, solitary, 2.5-3 broad ; 
surface smooth, dry, opaque, subtomentose, soft like a kid glove, 
not striate, very dark olivaceous, margin concolorous, entire, in- 
flexed on drying : lamellae sinuate-adnexed, crowded, broad, 
ventricose, flavous : spores oblong-ellipsoid, smooth, hyaline, 
12-16 X 4~5-5 /A : stipe short, thick, tapering downward, solid, 
fleshy, flavous, becoming brownish when bruised, 2 cm. long, 
8 mm. thick. 
Type collected on the ground in mixed woods at Corvallis, 
Oregon, November 6-1 1, 1911, W. A. Murrill ^48 (herb. N. Y. 
Bot. Card.). This species is very conspicuous on account of its 
dark-olive pileus and bright-yellow lamellae and stipe. The 
spores are also quite remarkable, being very long and narrow. 
The plant is known only from the original collection. 
W. A. Murrill. 
Insects and Mushrooms 
In Henri Fabre’s “ The Life of the Fly,” a translation of which 
has been published by Dodd, Mead, and Company, there is a 
chapter devoted to insects and mushrooms, in which reference is 
first made to the widespread belief that mushrooms eaten by 
insect larvae are safe for human beings. The author then pro- 
ceeds to describe in an interesting way what he observed in the 
neighborhood of Serignan. 
Of the chewing insects, he mentions four beetles and a moth- 
caterpillar. One of the beetles specializes on Pholiota aegerita, 
one attacks Polyporiis hispidus, and the o.ther two are partial to 
truffles. The caterpillar, about one fifth of an inch long, is the 
habitual boarder of all kinds of fleshy agarics and boleti. The 
