MUSEUM NOTES. 
99 
of Agriculture in Trinidad, who is now testing the use 
of the so-called Green Muscardine fungus on certain 
insects destructive to sugar cane. Many similar forms 
are destructive to scale insects and some of these have 
also been used in the Southern United States. Though 
comparatively little attention has been given to this 
subject by economic entomologists and others, the 
artificial culture and propagation of these diseases is a 
matter that deserves far more attention than has yet 
been given to it. 
Australia and New Zealand appear to produce the 
largest known species, and “vegetable worms” are 
well known in these countries. A considerable number 
of interesting forms have also been found in Java. 
Almost nothing, however, is known about them in 
Borneo, and in the other East Indian Islands, so that 
anyone finding such productions who will take the 
trouble to dry them and send them to the Museum 
packed in cotton or soft paper in a stout box, will 
be almost certain to have contributed a specimen of 
unusual scientific interest. 
In addition to diseases such as those above des¬ 
cribed, which are necessarily fatal to the insects which 
they attack, there are certain other types of fungus 
parasites which, although they grow on living insects, 
and occur nowhere else in nature, are quite harmless 
to there hosts ; the latter thus become the unwilling 
bearers of a flora which may grow in little forests on 
their integuments, which they seldom penetrate to any 
extent. The insect is thus able to live for both without 
great inconvenience and these singular plants, the forms 
of which in some cases are bizarre to a degree, have 
reached an extraordinary development in modern times, 
not only as to numbers but in respect to the multi¬ 
farious modifications which have been brought about 
by their varying conditions of existence on different 
hosts. They are propagated by direct contact from 
one insect to another and although the largest species 
are visible to the naked eye, many are so small that 
they can hardly be detected with a powerful hand lens ; 
and even then only bv one who is expert in these 
matters. Small beetles, flies, earwigs, roaches and various 
other insects with overlapping generations of adults, 
are bearers of these extraordinary plants, which reach 
