Recently a case occurred at the Botanic Gardens at Edinburgh which was somewhat novel. The assistant to the botanical professor was preparing for demonstration some dried specimens of a large puff-ball, filled with the dust-like spores, which he accidentally inhaled, and was for some time confined to his room under medical attendance from the irritation they caused. This would seem to prove that the spores of some fungi are liable, when inhaled in large quantities, to derange the system and become dangerous; but under usual and natural conditions such spores are not likely to be present in the atmosphere in sufficient quantity to cause inconvenience. In the autumn a very large number of basidiospores must be present in the atmosphere of woods, and yet there is no reason to believe that it is more unhealthy to breathe the atmosphere of a wood in September or October than in January or May. Dreadful effects are said to be produced by a species of black rust which attacks the large South of Europe reed, _Arundo donax_. This is in all probability the same species with that which attacks _Arundo phragmitis_ in this country, the spores of which produce violent headaches and other disorders amongst the labourers who cut the reeds for thatching. M. Michel states that the spores from the parasite on _Arundo donax_, either inhaled or injected, produce violent papular eruption on the face, attended with great swelling, and a variety of alarming symptoms which it is unnecessary to particularize, in various parts of the body.[K] Perhaps if _Sarcina_ should ultimately prove to be a fungus, it may be added to the list of those which aggravate, if they are not the primary cause of, disease in the human subject.