882 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
the general value and tensile strength of farmers’ binder-twine, and for 
other purposes connected with farming interests. In these tests I have 
been courteously assisted by the officer in charge of the Bureau of 
Equipment of the B oston Navy Yard, and also by Mr. E. B. Batch, 
Superintendent of the National Cordage Company, New York City. 
This machine is now in good working order. A number of experiments 
have been made with it, and the results of the preliminary trials are 
herewith furnished. It may be well to state here that this machine has 
no relation to another machine invented by me and illustrated herein, 
designed solely for testing and comparing the relative strengths of fibres 
and of threads. There is also furnished in this report an interesting 
statement of preliminary tests, made with this machine, of four samples 
of foreign flax, showing their relative strength as compared with their 
relative cost per ton. These samples of flax were received from 
Mr. J. M. Anderson, Belfast, Ireland. 
During the past year I have also devoted considerable time to inves- 
tigating and reporting upon wool fibres, and have testified officially in 
the United States courts, for the Secretary of the Treasury, in cases 
where such examinations were pertinent to a question of dutiable mer- 
chandise. Valuable samples of foreign and native wools have been 
added to the collection in this division through the courtesy of Mr. E. A. 
Greene, Philadelphia, Pa. ; also of Mr. John Consalus, Troy, N.Y., and 
others. 
It may also be proper for me to mention that I have in progress the 
preparation of a large collection of models representing, by casts taken 
from nature, the edible and poisonous mushrooms of the United States, 
in groupings and otherwise, illustrating their manner of growth, deve- 
lopment, colouring, and, as far as possible, their diversity of habitat. 
In this line of work enough has already been done to shape roughly 
an exhibit for the World’s Columbian Exposition, which exhibit, it is 
desirable, should be as comprehensive and perfect as the one in the 
Museum at Nice, France, which shows the mushrooms prepared in 
plaster, life-size, and coloured after nature. In this way the public is 
enabled readily to compare one kind of mushroom with another, and to 
study them in all their stages of growth. 
With the approval and co-operation of the Assistant-Secretary, I 
have, as already said, commenced my preparations for such an exhibit, 
which will be made as complete as the means placed at my disposal will 
permit.” 
J3. Technique.* 
Weichselbaum’s Pathological Histology.! — Dr. A. Weichselbaum’s 
work on pathological histology has special reference to methods of 
research, though there is a considerable amount of descriptive letterpress 
* This subdivision contains (1) Collecting Objects, including Culture Pro- 
cesses ; (2) Preparing Objects ; (3) Cutting, including Imbedding and Microtomes ; 
(4) Staining and Injecting; (5) Mounting, including slides, preservative fluids, &c. ; 
(6) Miscellaneous. 
t Leipzig and Vienna, 1892. See Centralbl. f. Bakteriol. u. Parasitenk., xii. 
(1892) p. 255. 
