5i 



that the disease here mentioned should scarcely have been heard 

 of until a couple of years ago. As a matter of fact, enormous 

 numbers of palms are dying over a large extent of country, and 

 the cultivators themselves are in a state of passive despair in face 

 of a calamity which they cannot understand. 



The extent of the area affected is quite unknown, but it includes 

 almost if not quite the whole of North Sylhet. I have seen the 

 disease from Chhatak to Badarpur in greater or less severity, but 

 there are centres where the loss is very much more serious than 

 elsewhere. One of these is Kanairghat which I visited in May 

 1905. In Kanairghat and the surrounding villages there are 

 hundreds of acres of betel gardens, and the actual loss suffered 

 amounts in many cases to more than seventy-five rupees an acre 

 annually, while some gardens were seen in which fifteen-sixteenths 

 of the trees had been killed. 



The symptoms are quite characteristic and are readily recognized 

 by the villagers. As in the Mysore disease, one of the earliest 

 signs is a dropping of the nuts. Almost the whole produce of the 

 palm may be lost in this way at an early stage in the disease. 

 Very soon the swollen green part at the top of the stem, below 

 the leafy head, is found to be diminishing in size, and quite the 

 most striking symptom is this change from the graceful curved 

 swelling of the coverings of the terminal bud to an almost 

 straight-sided cone at the top of the tree. Withering of the outer 

 leaves accompanies this change, leaf after leaf withering until the 

 whole head dries up and falls off. The final appearance is just 

 the same as in " kole roga." 



In the early stages of the disease the leaves and terminal bud 

 show no signs of rotting, and even after the outer leaves begin to 

 wither and the head to shrink, the conditions resemble those 

 which would be caused by drought or some general disturbance, 

 and not by a local disease at the crown of the palm. No trace of 

 any parasite fungus can be found in the earlier stages at the top 

 of the tree. The stem is generally healthy. Below ground, how- 

 ever, matters are different. Here there is invariably a rot, either 

 of the roots or of the below-ground part of the stem, even in very 

 early cases. A large number of trees of all ages were dug out 

 and examined, with the result that the presence of a root disease 

 was placed beyond doubt. In some cases the base of the stem 

 itself remained healthy, while all or most of the feeding roots 

 were destroyed. In others the rot was more visible in the stem. 

 The characters of the rot were similar in all cases, the wood being 

 turned brown and filled with the mycelium of a fungus. Usually 

 this fungus was found to have invaded the ends of the roots and 

 to have progressed along these into the stem, killing the tissues 

 as it advanced. But whether it originates in the roots or appears 

 first in the tissues of the " collar," the effects are always the same 

 and are quite sufficient to account for the death of the trees. 



A number of root-destroying fungi are known in different parts 

 of the world. In most cases their attack is more or less similar 

 to the above. The Himalayan deodar disease, due to Fomes 



