274 PROCEEDINGS OP THE ACADEMY OF [1886. 



As in the peach leaf-curl, the first leaves that push in the 

 spring are attacked, and are soon destroj-ed, the blistered and 

 browned leaves all falling by the first of June. New leaves, free 

 from the fungus, and weak shoots follow the attack. The absence 

 of flowers led to the discovery of the method by which the 

 fasciation is formed. In the normal condition of the cherry tree, 

 the weak shoots become fruit-bearing spurs. From these spurs 

 leaves annually appear, leaving an axillary bud, which becomes 

 the flower bud of the next season. The leaf continues healthy 

 throughout the growing season, and the parts that, morphologi- 

 cally speaking, might make a weak growth of wood, remain in 

 a kind of microcosm as sepals, petals, stamens, and carpels, fed 

 by the leaf for another year. But when this leaf is injured or 

 destroyed, instead of the bud remaining quiescent, or the 

 theoretical leaves changing into floral parts in the bud, a new 

 growth of leaves and the weak shoot are produced instead. It 

 is indeed so clear when once observed that the fasciation is 

 simply the development to weak branches of what would nor- 

 mally' be blossom spurs, that it was provoking to reflect that it 

 had taken so many years to discover it. 



An interesting observation was that the fungus should confine 

 itself to the fasciated mass for so many years, and show no dis- 

 position whatever to spread to any other part of the tree. In 

 practical gardening we were taught when these fungus pests 

 appeared on orchard trees it was highly important to cut off 

 the branches or leaves, and burn them, in order to check the 

 spread. In the absence of actual demonstration in this case, one 

 might with good reason assume that the mycelium of the para- 

 site had obtained an entrance into the tissue and propagated 

 itself continuously as the branches grew, and that a crop of 

 spores in myriads must be produced annually. Only in rare 

 instances were the circumstances favorable to their germination. 

 The careful cutting away and burning of a few thousand spores 

 would be a matter of small importance in comparison with the 

 immense number that must escape the eff'ort of the cultivator for 

 their destruction. Safety lies evidently rather in the difficulty 

 these minute bodies experience in finding the exact conditions 

 necessarj^ for their growth and development, than from the 

 destruction of the germs themselves. 



Distribution of Modiola tulipa. Mr. John Ford reported the 

 finding by him of a half-grown specimen of Modiola tulipa Lam., 

 near Cape May, N. J., on the 16th ult. As the species is essen- 

 tially a southern one, it was at first supposed that the specimen 

 had been carried north on the bottom of a vessel, or in some 

 other artificial manner. The discovery two weeks later, by Mr. 

 Ford, of a dozen or more adult specimens, at Anglesea, ten 

 miles further north, seems to prove that the species has entered 



