RECENT MICROSCOPY. 
17 
during the year require notice. Mr. Jabez Hogg took up the 
question of the diseases said to be caused by a fungoid growth 
in India, and well known as the 66 Fungus Foot.” The conclu- 
sion he arrived at was that the fungus was not the cause of the 
disease, but a growth taking place in dead matter suitable for 
its development. 
In France considerable annoyance and alarm, as well as in- 
terest, was excited in the summer by the appearance of a yellow 
fungus, which has been named Oidium aurantiacum , in the 
u munition 'bread ” furnished to the French soldiers in Paris. 
This fungus produces orange-coloured spots on bread, and was 
first recognised by M. Payen on its appearance in bread supplied 
to French soldiers some thirty years ago (1843). A small 
portion of bread afflicted with it is sufficient to inoculate any 
quantity. The precise cause of its appearance at uncertain 
intervals is unknown, and forms one of the subjects to be inves- 
tigated by a commission to whom the whole question has been 
referred. M. Decaisne stated to the French Academy that he 
met with bread affected by this oidium (if such it is to be called) 
in Italy in 1862, at a place named Eadicofani, and the landlord of 
the inn told him that it was the second time it had appeared 
in ten years. The first time, he said, it had not disagreed with 
anybody who eat it, but on this occasion he considered it had 
made one of his servants ill, and M. Decaisne found him suffer- 
ing from vertigo, which an emetic removed. 
M. Gauthier de Claubry stated that he had found bread simi- 
larly affected in 1831, at Chartres, with a fungus he considered 
uvedo rubigo ; and in 1842 he saw the same vegetation on the 
munition bread of Paris. He also discovered spores of this 
fungus in the wheat employed. It is not stated that this fungus 
— whatever its name ought to be — produced ill effects on the 
Paris troops last summer, but M. Decaisne says its action is 
uncertain, and that all loaves that may be attacked should be 
treated as unfit for food. 
This bread fungus is the more interesting from having been 
one of the first, if not the first, of its tribe that drew the atten- 
tion of observers to the curious and unexpected fact that its 
spores were not deprived of their germinating power by a heat 
equal to that of boiling water, to which the loaves must have 
been exposed in baking. Should any reader meet with this 
fungus, he should carefully watch its growth, notice its fructifi- 
cation, and sow spores on rice paste and other substances. It 
is probably not a true species, but a variety of some commoner 
kind. 
Amongst miscellaneous matters which cannot now be more 
than alluded to, it may be remarked that Mr. H. J. Carter 
has adduced reasons for considering cocoliths as plants allied 
VOL. XI. — NO. NLII. C 
