=Distribution of Cereals in the United States.=--To inquiries made preparatory to drawing up a report on the Distribution of Cereals in North America (Department of Agriculture, Biological Survey), Mr. C. S. Plumb received one thousand and thirty-three answers, eight hundred and ninety-seven of which came from the United States and the rest from the Canadian provinces. These reports showed that in many localities, particularly in the East and South, but little attention is paid to keeping varieties pure, and many farmers use mixed, unknown, or local varieties of ordinary merit for seed. In New England but little grain is grown from sowing, owing to the cheapness of Western grain, and wheat is rarely reported. Oats are now mostly sown from Western seed, and the resulting crop is mown for hay, while most of the corn is cut for green fodder or silage. On certain fine lowlands--as, for example, in the Connecticut Valley--oats, and more especially corn, are often grown for grain. While reports on most of the cereals were rendered from the lower austral zone, or the region south of the Appalachians and the old Missouri Compromise line, this region, except where it merges with the upper austral or the one north of it, is apparently outside the area of profitable cultivation of wheat and oats. In Louisiana and most of the other parts of the lower austral, except in northern Texas and Oklahoma, wheat is almost an unknown crop. The warm, moist climatic conditions here favor the development of fungous diseases to such a degree that the plants are usually ruined or greatly injured at an early stage of growth. In Florida, as a rule, cereals are rarely cultivated except on the uplands at the northern end of the State. In a general way, corn and wheat are most successfully grown in the upper austral zone, or central States, while oats are best and most productive in the transition zone (or northern and Lake States and the Dakotas), or along the border of the upper austral and transition. The gradual acclimation of varieties of cereals, through years of selection and cultivation, has gone so far, however, that some varieties are now much better adapted to one zone than to another.