354 State Horticultural Society. 



first place from a single spore, and each fertile thread may bear from 

 one to many spores. There may, therefore, be from a few to many 

 thousands of spores, or hundreds of thousands, produced from one in- 

 fection on the host plant. There must be some millions of spores in 

 one of the sooty masses on corn, usually called smut, and all this from 

 one infecting spore, much too small to be seen by the unaided eye. They 

 may be borne on the naked surface or clustered in structures, each pecu- 

 liar to its kind. 



The asco-spores, the second more common kind, are so called be- 

 cause they are borne within little transparent, usually cylindrical sacs, 

 called asci (singular ascns), from a Greek word, meaning bottle. These 

 inay be crudely represented by a glass jar, such as is often used for 

 showing fruits in liquid, filled with about eight apples, forming within 

 the cylindrical jar a single erect row. The exhibition jar represents the 

 ascus, the apples the contained spores. These spores only escape by 

 the rupture of the walls of the ascus, which, however, seems to be easy 

 enough when the proper time comes. More commonly the conidia are 

 distributed as soon as ripe; the asco-spores more generally remain in 

 their sacs over winter, and are ready to germinate the succeeding spring. 

 The former are sometimes called the temporary or imperfect, and the 

 latter, the final or perfect fruit of the fungus. Very often the asci are 

 produced many together, in specialized fruit bodies of various structure 

 or shape, according to the species of the fungus. Here, too, the num- 

 ber of spores from one area of infection may be comparatively few or 

 may reach hundreds of thousands. 



These microscopic parasites (sometimes indeed becoming in the 

 mass evjdent enough) may seem to be insignificant enemies, scarcely 

 worthy of our attention. But when the crops, which give excellent 

 promise of rich harvests, are destroyed as by some unseen pestilence, 

 when the toilsome labors for a summer meet only a fraction of the an- 

 ticipated reward, and when we finally come to understand what the 

 mysterious enemies are — these same microscopic fungi — we get quite 

 another view of the situation and a decidedly different notion about our 

 part in relation to them. The fact is, these parasites of the vegetable 

 world cause the loss annually in our country of millions of dollars to the 

 agriculturists and horticulturists, and the latter are, in many instances, 

 the worst sufiferers. The taxes assessed by the town, the county and the 

 State are insignificant burdens compared with those levies taken with- 

 out process of law by these pestilential foes. Even rents are light in- 

 deed by the side of their unhindered ravages, and they seem to fatten 

 upon what they feed. They apparently are getting worse, doing more 



