SCIENTIFIC SUMMAEY. 
307 
Fungi on Insects. — The Academy gives an interesting abstract of a recent 
paper by Dr. Bail, of Dantzig, on this subject. A propos of the destruction of 
the finest trees by caterpillars, he states that in certain seasons these cater- 
pillars appeared to be attacked by an epidemic, their bodies being swollen 
to bursting, and white threads being visible between the rings of the body, 
which seemed to issue from the body itself. In this condition great num- 
bers were found still clinging to the leaves. The destroying agent had been 
identified by Dr. Reichhardt, of Vienna, as the mycelium of a fungus which 
he named Fmpusa aulicce. The distribution of the Fmpusa is very con- 
siderable ; the only order of insects which is not at present known to be 
subject to their attacks being the Neuroptera (dragon-flies, &c.) ; they are 
known to be parasitic upon Coleoptera (beetles), Hymenoptera (bees, ants, 
&c.), Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), Diptera (flies and gnats), 
Orthoptera (crickets, &c.), and aphides, either in the larva or perfect con- 
dition, on water-insects, and even the same species on amphibia and fishes. 
Not only is their distribution over so many different animals remarkable, 
but also the prodigious rapidity of their development in the individual. 
The common house-fly is, in some years, destroyed by this parasite in vast 
numbers, and the dung-fly has been in certain districts almost annihilated. 
In the forests of Pomerania and Posen the caterpillars have been killed by 
it in such quantities that it may be considered to have saved the trees from 
total destruction. The fungi which Dr. Bail found to be the most 
destructive to insect life were those described by authors as Cordyceps 
militaris , Isaria farinosa, and Penicillium glaucum • the two latter forms he 
inclines to unite as different stages of growth of the same plant. 
The Flowering and Fruiting of Aucuba Japonica. — At a meeting of the 
Botanical Society of Edinburgh, on April 14, Mr. P. S. Robertson 
stated that he had observed that recently-introduced female plants from 
Japan (grown in a coal-pit) came into flower in January and February, 
while the male plants, grown in the same circumstances, never came into 
flower till the middle of March. Yet he had every year obtained a crop of 
young seedlings from the berries, although the female flowers were quite 
shrivelled before the male ones expanded. He found that the common 
spotted variety, long grown in this country, did not flower till May or June, 
although grown in the pit or house with the others, and begins to expand 
its flowers when the males are getting past ; yet it also n§ver fails to pro- 
duce a crop cf fruit with perfect seeds. He thought that the pollen must 
lodge for some time in the scales of the unopened flower-buds, or reaches 
the pistils before the flowers are expanded ; but how to account for the fer- 
tilizing- of the early-flowering varieties he was at a loss. This year he had 
forced on the flowering of the male plants by placing them in strong heat, 
and had all the varieties of the male and female plants in full flower at very 
nearly the same time, and accordingly anticipates a much larger produce of 
berries than in former years, when they were left to the ordinary course. 
He exhibited a branch bearing berries with perfect seed; yet when that 
• plant came into flower, there had not been a male plant in the house where 
it grew for fully a month previously. 
The Medicinal Plants of India. — The Indian Medical Gazette says that the 
Secretary of State has authorised Mr. Broughton, the Government Quinolo- 
