The Agricultural Holdings Act. 
507 
tunely in support of the concluding paragraph of the last case I 
reported for the Journal (see ante, p. 359), for the limitation of the 
right of appeal is as strong in the Scotch as in the English Act — 
perhaps stronger : “ The decision of the Sheriff on appeal shall be 
final " (Sec. 20 of the Scotch Act). 
S. B. L. Druce. 
9 Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn, W.C. 
A FUNGUS ON BUTTER. 
A piece of butter, taken from one of the samples exhibited at 
Cambridge, was submitted to me for examination by Professor 
Carroll. It weighed about ^ oz., and displayed six dark-brown 
circular specks, averaging 2'5 mm. in diameter. Under a low 
power they were seen to consist of felted masses of brown branching 
filaments, each divided by closely recurring transverse septa into 
small, square compartments, many of which showed a tendency to 
sprout somewhat after the manner of yeast-cells. The lateral pro- 
longations thus formed were cut off by septa from the mother-cell 
and were of a darker brown. Older specimens of these laterally 
budded-off spoi-es became multiseptate from intercalation of trans- 
verse partition- walls, or spuriously so from formation of fresh buds 
at the apex. Many of the cells were almost wholly filled by a 
shining globule. 
The condition above described (figs. 1 and 2) is identical with 
Fig. 1.— Mycelium of Dematium. Form on butter, showing Fig. 2.— Spore-chain on 
chlamydo-spore formation, anil development of secondary butter. ( x 2U0.) 
spores by budding. ( x 20U.) 
Dematium pullulans, De By., and is to be looked upon as an imper- 
fect state of some Spliserioid Pyrenomycete. It is hardly possible 
to state what is the precise species, for there is no doubt that many 
sphieriaceous fungi assume in their imperfect stage forms indis- 
tinguishable from Dematium pullulans. Thus, Brefeld has shown 
that Sphairulina intermixfa, a species occurring on rose-twUs, 
possesses an imperfect form identical with the Dematium in question. 
He considers the close segmentation of the brown mycelium to be 
chlamydo-spore formation, and points out that the individual seg- 
ments or chlamydo-spores reproduce themselves like yeasts by 
sprouting. Such spores are frequently to be met with as unbidden 
guests in beer-wort, where they vie with the true yeasts in un- 
bounded power of prolification, and are one of the causes of viscidity. 
In order to ascertain something of the life history of this fungus, 
v p 2 
