New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 479 



established in the oviposition wounds of the tree cricket have 

 revealed the interesting fact that during 1913 the causal organism 

 was in the majority of cases a species of fungus known as Lepto- 

 sphceria coniothyrium (Fckl.) Sacc. {Coniothyrium Fuckelii Sacc). 

 According to Duggar 8 this is a fungus which, as a disease-producing 

 organism, has been known only a few years. O'Gara 9 lists it as 

 occurring on apple and rose at Washington, D. C, and on apples 

 in a nursery near Clemson College, S. C. It is stated by this writer 

 that most of the infections took place where the bark of the trees 

 had been bruised or broken by tools or harness in cultivating. In 

 New York this fungus had, up to the time of this investigation on 

 tree crickets, attracted no attention either as an apple or as a rose 

 pest; but since 1899 it has been regarded in this State as the cause 

 of a widespread and serious disease of raspberries, which is popularly 

 known as raspberry cane blight. It is essentially a wilt disease 

 and the principal damage results to the fruiting canes. The whole 

 cane may be involved or only a portion of it. Stewart and Eustace I0 

 believe that infection occurs in wounds of various kinds and that a 

 break in the epidermis usually precedes the attack. They also state 

 that cane-blight often starts in wounds made by the " heading 

 back " of new canes, by the removal of branches, by the rubbing 

 of canes against each other or against supporting wires, particularly 

 in crotches where the branches are more or less split apart and in 

 wounds made by the snowy tree cricket (Ecanthus niveus (nigri- 

 cornis) during oviposition. That infection does actually occur in 

 tree-cricket wounds is shown by the large number of instances in 

 which the cane is covered with Coniothyrium pycnidia in the vicinity 

 of the wounds, usually just below them." 



The occurrence of Coniothyrium about the oviposition punctures 

 of niveus in apple bark have suggested that this cricket may act as 

 a carrier of the disease. In studying the feeding and egg-laying 

 habits of this insect it appears that infection of apple bark might 

 take place (l) as a result of wounds produced by the gnawing of the 

 bark by the female as the initial step in the act of oviposition; (2) by 

 means of the ovipositor, the adhesive substance discharged at the 

 time of deposition serving to collect and to hold the spores which 



8 B. M. Duggar, Fungous Diseases of Plants, p. 354. 1909. 



9 P. J. O'Gara, Phytopathology, I: 100. 1911. 



10 F. C. Stewart and H. J. Eustace. N. Y. Agr. Exp. Sta. Bui. 226 (1302); and F. C. 

 Stewart, N. Y. Agr. Exp. Sta. Bui. 328, p. 387 (1910). 



