292 GRIFFITHS: West AMERICAN FUNGI 
affected and no seed whatever produced. During five years’ col- 
lecting it was observed in no other locality, although the host is 
one of the most common of the prairie grasses and often found in 
similar situations, 
Ustilago elegans sp. nov. 
Fructification of fungus occurring within the upper or within 
the second or third leaf sheath which becomes much enlarged and 
does not open until the maturity of the parasite which occupies its 
entire interior. Spores subglobose, angular or often elongated 
with a small central rather indistinct nucleus, 10-13 » in diameter ; 
epispore about 1 y thick, minutely echinulate. (Fig. 3.) 
On Chloris elegans H.B.K. (309) Cochise, Ariz., Oct. 1900. 
The method of attack, while similar in all cases studied in the field, 
presents a great variation which is coérdinated with the vigor of 
the plant. On the general mesa the plants affected with the smut 
were not usually over one to two and one half inches tall with 
all but the lower internodes destroyed. In the railroad ditches, 
however, where the host was stimulated by the accumulation of 
water, the upper internode together with the head was ordinarily 
affected. Sometimes both of these methods of attack are to be 
found in the same plant. 
UstiLaco HypopyTEs (Schw.) Fr. and its allies 
These culm smuts are exceedingly abundant in many portions 
of the West on a great variety of hosts. My collections contai 
them on the following: S#pa spartea Trin. (3), Stpa viridula 
Trin., Stipa occidentale Thurb. (236), Agropyron occidentale Scribn. 
(234), Elymus condensatus Presl. (233), Elymus striatus Willd. 
(201), Distichlis spicata (L.) Greene (235). The first of these, 
collected at Canton, S. D., is referred to U. minima Arth. the 
others to U. hypodytes although the author is inclined to the Op!” 
ion that future cultural and inoculation experiments will result in 
a segregation of species. Field observations in the Northwest 
during the past ten years point strongly to such a conclusion. 
One of the above forms may often be found attacking every indi- 
vidual of a certain species within certain areas while other hosts 
upon which some of the forms occur may within the same are4 be 
entirely unaffected. Notable instances of this have been observed 
in several localities. At Brookings, S. D., in 1892, 1893 and 
