STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



43 



lug winter, and their incipient spring vegetation. In what natural hot-beds are they 

 started and what are the conditions of their growth P That they must have seasons of 

 favoring rains, heats and colds, like all other plants, or they cannot grow, every one of 

 course knows ; for that is a universal law of all vegetable life, and especially of plants 

 so excessively minute and frail as all the semi-croscopic fungi are known to be ; and 

 some of the conditions of weather are becoming quite well known, in which they are 

 most likely to flourish or destroy. Nobody expects these blights In winter, nor in very 

 dry and equable summers, no more than they do a good crop of corn in similar seasons ; 

 alternations of frequent showers with excessive heat, seem most favorable to their 

 destructive production ; but like other plants they cannot jjrow without seeds, and a 

 proper nidus for those seeds to start in, at least not to any alarming extent ; and this 

 brings back again the vital question. Where does their seed come from — or their 

 sporules — after perhaps years of apparent absence ? and how is it kept over and how 

 and where does it first start to grow ? and how can wc arrest its vegetation or destroy 

 or avoid the nidus, in which it first starts into life ? Answer these questions, and you 

 have answered all that need practically to be asked. I shall not pretend to answer 

 these questions, but only to frankly surest my own present impressions, for the future 

 corroboration or rejection of the members of this society. My own impression then is, 

 in a single word, that rotten or decaying wood or sap is the nidus from which many if not 

 all these fungi first start into being; I do not mean dead, dry limbs or sticks in tree 

 tops or vine branches, but dead anil still moist patches and filaments, or fibres qf wood 

 in the bark, trunk, or limbs, and especially in the root of the tree or vine itself; caused 

 perhaps, years before, by the descent of poisonous sap from frosted limbs or branches. 



My Impression is that these dead but still perpetually moist filaments or particles of 

 wood are the hot-bed, or nidus, in which these sporules are perpetually germinated from 

 year to year; and that they can assume their destructive power to invade the living tis- 

 sues of the tree or fruit, only when it becomes surcharged with a plethora of sap, pro- 

 ducing at the point attacked a stagnation of sap, or in other words dead sap, which 

 these watchful scavengers of vegetable life at once seize hold of, and multiply them- 

 selve- as the yeast plant does in the moistened dough, with incredible rapidity and pow- 

 er sufflcienl to involve and kill by decrees all the soft, living tissue around ; provided the 

 weather continues favorable to their immense propagation and growth, If not they dry 

 out and Blink harmlessly back again to their old nidus, and their old home in the rotten 

 wood and filaments of the vine or trunk or roots, propagating only these from year to 

 year, till called into their destructive increase and action again in some future year, by 

 recurrent favorable conditions. 



To give all my reasons for this, (I confess somewhat singular opinion) would require a 

 volume rather than an essay. I will only hint at a few of the farts which have led me 

 to this conclusion. 



I. Qrapee like the Clinton, never killed by frost in winter, seldom rot in summer. Why 

 not '■ Because there are DO filaments or fibres of dead wood in their roots caused by the 

 frosted sap of the dead or frost-bitten tops, to furnish B nidus for these sporules to germ- 

 inate in, ready for use from year to year. 



II. Qrapes recently layered, or so young as never to have been frost-killed in winter, 

 even of the tender varieties, seldom if ever rot ; because their roots and stems are all 

 sound and good, unless decay has been produced by some other cause. Old vines that 

 have once been killed down or bitten by the frost, and whose roots are of course more or 



