154 Miscellaneous. Two other uatural-history articles are of botauical interest, dealing with the diseases of certain important plants. Both are from the pen of Dr. J. Brunchorst. The first (in Xorwegian) is a revision of the plant-diseases of economic importance which occur in Norway, and gives the results of a special journey undertaken by the author for the purpose of investigating the diseases which affect the principal cultivated plants, and contains his observations upon barley, rye and oats, potatoes, clover, turnips, and kale, also upon natural pine-woods, fruit-trees, hops, and roses. In the majority of cases the mischief is done by iungi, which is also the case with the disease of the black-fir (Pinus mistriaca), which forms the subject of Dr. Brunchorst's second memoir (in German). This disease, which attacks the needles and twigs of the trees, seems to have been very injurious ; but the fungus which causes it cannot be identified fur-ther than that it is the pycnidian stage of an Ascomycctan. It also attacks the dwarf pine {Pinus montariu), which has been planted over a great extent of the west coast of Norway. This paper is illustrated with two plates. The only other article in this Report is an account by M. A. Lorange of the discovery in a mound near the Karmsuud of a por-tion of a vessel of the age of the Yikings ; but the antiquary will also find some interesting objects figured upon two plates representing specimens presented to the Museum during the year. MISCELLANEOUS. On a new Parasite of Amphiura. By J. Waltek Fewkes. The Secretary read a communication on the parasitism of a Crusta-cean in the brood-cavities of a common brittle-star {Amphiura squa-mata), which he had discovered while at work in the Marine Laboratory at Newport. The Ophiurans, or brittle-stars, have two methods of development or metamoriDhosis, known as the direct and indirect. In the indirect the young passes through a stage called the pluteus, in which a ])ro-visional organism is developed from which the young form by budding, the provisional organism or pluteus being eventually ab-sorbed by the growing young of the brittle-star. Our common OpJiiophoIis (0. aculeata) has such a pluteus. In the case of other Ophiurans, such as Amphiura, however, there is no free pluteus in their metamorphosis, but the young are developed, without nomadic stages, in special sacs of the mother, called brood-sacs, of which there are ten situated in pairs on each side of the [bases of the] arms. The young Amphiura passes its early life in these sacs, at first at-tached by an umbilicus, afterwards free, and remains there until it
BioStor
