It is well known that the mean temperature falls as the elevation increases, and partly on this account certain crops cannot profitably be produced on high land. But it is also recognised that low lying land is subject to lower minimum temperatures, and is therefore more liable to frost, than land higher up, and low situations are consequently avoided by fruit and early potato growers. Few actual temperature readings have, however, been published.

In experimentally infected birds a clear viscid discharge from the nostril is sometimes the first symptom noticed, and may occasionally be the only one for a long time (turkey E). This is followed by a soft fluctuating swelling under one or both eyes. After the development of a well-marked swelling, the course of the disease may vary both in naturally and experimentally infected birds. In some cases the swelling gradually diminishes and finally disappears (turkeys 3, C, D, F, and G), in other cases the soft fluctuating swelling persists for considerable periods (turkeys 1, E and H), and in others the swellings become hard and the gelatinous contents are replaced by cheesy, foulsmelling material (turkeys 2, A and B). The latter condition may be due to secondary infection. Sometimes the disease only attacks one side leaving the other quite normal. Death occurred in some instances, but could not be definitely attributed to the disease.

It has long been recognised that a trace of soluble salt will bring about the flocculation of the material suspended in a turbid liquid; and because of its bearing upon such practical matters as the clearing of drinking water, the deposition of silt at the mouths of estuaries, and the improvement of the texture of heavy soils, the process has received a considerable amount of investigation. It is probably related to the flocculation of colloids by similar reagents; the fine particles of clay which chiefly cause the turbidity of natural waters being composed of a hydrated silicate of alumina and other bases possessing properties akin to those of the colloids. Indeed Schloesing has proposed to call that portion of clay material which remains obstinately suspended in water, sometimes for days together, ‘colloid clay,’ as something distinct in kind from the other particles in the soil. However it is reasonable to suppose that the distinction between the ‘colloid’ clay and the rest is in the main one of size, the colloid particles being so small as to be beyond the limits of microscopic vision, just as the trae colloids may be regarded as consisting of very large molecules, lying between the molecules which go into solution and the molecular aggregates that remain in water as suspended solids.

In some of the earlier experiments in which Bordeaux Mixture was used as a fungicide, it has happened that neither the part sprayed nor the control has suffered from disease at all; yet it has been recorded that the sprayed part has continued green for a longer period and has produced a larger crop.

Before proceeding to discuss the immediate subject of this communication, it may be well to recapitulate shortly the views on the general question of the meaning of strength of flours which I expressed in the last number of this journal. It may perhaps be remembered that I suggested that strength, as defined by Humphries and Biffen, to be the capacity of making large well-piled loaves, must be a complex of at least two factors. One of these factors, that which regulates the size of the loaf, I showed to be the power of continuing to evolve carbon dioxide gas throughout the later stages of dough fermentation. I described how to measure this property by incubating in a bottle at 40ºC. a mixture of 20 gms. flour, 20 c.c. water, and ½gm. yeast, the bottle being connected to a gas measuring apparatus, and the volume of gas given off being read from time to time. A number of experimental figures were given, which showed that the size of the loaf which a flour could make, was directly connected with the rate at which it gave off gas in the later stages of dough fermentation, at the time when it was ready for the oven.

While reading the two interesting papers on immune wheats in the last number of this Journal it occurred to us that our observations on rust resistant wheats in India might be of some interest. During the past two years a large number of varieties of Indian and European wheats have been grown by us at Pusa in Behar and at Lyallpur in the Punjab, one of the objects being to obtain wheats immune or at least resistant to rusts which would serve as parents in raising rust resistant hybrids. Biffen last year suggested that a trial should be made with Einkorn (Triticum monococcum vulgare, Kcke.), and kindly supplied us with a sample of the seed.

In Volume II. Part 2 of this Journal there appeared a note by W. L. Balls on the above subject, in which he states that “long lint is completely dominant over short.” This dominance, the present writer in India has found to occur in the case of crosses between many very different varieties. The question is not however so simple as it would appear to be from Mr Ball's statement “that the breeding of pure types suitable to the needs of the manufacturer and the cultivator will possibly prove a little difficult”; for though length of staple is on the whole dominant we often get seeds that carry both long and short cotton.

The following is a brief summary of the more important points which our investigations so far appear to have given us:—

1. That white clover and ryegrass form by far the greater part of the herbage on the best grazing lands—both old and recent in the English Midlands—and that the next most abundant species on these pastures are usually crested dogstail, florin (A. stolonifera), and rough-stalked meadow grass.

2. That the herbage of the inferior types of grass land in the same district consists very largely of bent grass (A. vulgaris) and various weeds, while white clover and ryegrass are present in comparatively small quantities.

It was shown in an earlier communication that the absorption of oxygen by soil is mainly brought about by the action of microorganisms, and is greatly diminished if the soil has previously been heated to 120ºC. On one occasion the temperature of the steriliser only rose to 95º, and it was found that the rate of oxidation of the soil, instead of being reduced, was considerably increased. This unexpected result led to experiments with other methods of partial sterilisation, such as exposure to vapours of toluene, chloroform, etc., and in each case the same effect was produced, the amount of oxygen absorbed showed a marked increase after the antiseptic was removed.

It is only quite recently that the perithecium, ascocarp or sporocarp, as it has been variously called, of the Erysiphaceae has been shown to possess a regular dehiscence accompanied by the ejection of the ascospores. We find the fact first recorded, I believe, by Worthington G. Smith, in 1884. In 1903 I independently observed the phenomenon in the same species, viz. Erysiphe Graminis DC., which Smith had studied. Smith's observations seem to have been entirely overlooked until attention was called to them in my paper in 1903, and up to this date the perithecium of the Erysiphaceae is described in nearly all text-books as a cleistothedum or cleistocarp, since it was supposed to remain closed until it decayed and ruptured to permit of the escape of the ascospores.