AND COLLEGE, PUSA, FOR 1915-16 5* 



check this by spraying have been in progress for a consider- 

 able time. It has been found that early spraying with 

 Burgundy mixture, beginning in June and repeated every 

 fortnight until the fruit is nearly ripe, when ammoniacal 

 copper carbonate should be used, is successful in preserving 

 the fruit from the disease. An account of the method has 

 been published. 



(8) Sal tree disease. The disease of sal trees, men- 

 tioned for the first time in the last annual report of the sec- 

 tion, has appeared again this year in the forest of Buxa 

 Duars and is also reported in the Gorakhpur division. The 

 symptoms of the disease and the fungus which occurs on 

 diseased trees are exactly the same as in the previous des- 

 cription. Specimens of the fungus sent to Kew have been 

 identified as Polyporus Shorece Wakefield — a species new to 

 science — and the description published in the Kew Bulletin. 

 The fungus is said to be readily distinguished from other 

 species by the hard but brittle texture of the pileus, espe- 

 cially of the pores, when dry and the wrinkled deeply 

 cracked dark crust. In living specimens the soft swollen 

 whitish margin of the pileus is a distinctive feature. The 

 basidia are normal and each bears fine hyaline spores from 

 2-5 — 3-5/x in diameter. 



In culture the fungus grows well on a variety of media. 

 On glucose agar the mycelium is largely submerged and 

 produces a dense brown pigment; the hyphse very often 

 segment into spores. On sterile corn meal the fungus 

 nearly always produces structures which suggest fructifica- 

 tions ; so far however they have not produced any basidia 

 or spores. The excretion of a yellowish liquid is a feature 

 common to these structures in culture and to the pileus in 

 the field. 



Inoculations were carried out in the jungle at Rajah- 

 bhatkhawa in September of last year but defects in the 

 method of this preliminary experiment, combined with the 

 lateness of the season at the time of making the infection, 

 ' proved unfavourable, and no conclusive results have so far 

 been obtained. The inoculations were repeated this June, 



