BY KEY. J. E. TEXISOX-VOODS, F.L.S. AXD F. M. BAILEY, F.L.S. 57 



injured by blight, mildews, smuts, rusts, &c. Little or nothing 

 is known about the origin and spread of these terrible pests, and 

 it is equally certain that if they were known they would in a 

 measure be provided against. Although by many mycologists 

 the polymorphy of these blights has been doubted, yet experience 

 seem to have decided that a blight of one kind affecting one class 

 of plants may be transformed into a mildew or a rust amongst 

 cereal crops. Certain j)ortions of England were for a long time 

 subject to mildews and rust whicli farmers, it would seem, but 

 too justly attributed to the influence of certain fungi on the 

 Berberry shrubs near. Experiments were tried and it was found 

 that wheat, rape, and barley sown in the neighbourhood of a 

 berberry bush covered with a fungus called u3^cidiuni herhen'dis, 

 contracted rust immediately after the maturation of the spores of 

 the JEcidia. The rust was most abundant where the wind carried 

 the spores. The following year the same observations were 

 repeated ; the spores of the ^cidium were collected, and applied 

 to some healthy plants of rye, after five or six days these plants 

 were affected with rust, while the remainder of the crop was 

 sound. In 1863 some winter rye was sown round a berberry 

 bush, which in the following year was infested with ^cidiiun, 

 which was mature in the middle of May, when the rye was 

 completely covered with rust. Of the grasses near the bush 

 Triticum repens, was most affected. — (See Cook and Berkeley's 

 ^^ Fimgi,''^ page 200.) It will be easily seen from this fact how 

 important the study of fungi becomes, for in the locality referred 

 to the destruction of the berberry bushes has been the salvation 

 of the crop. 



Before giving a list of those fungi which are known to inhabit 

 Queensland and New South Wales, it will be necessary to 

 explain a few technical terms for the use of students who may 

 not have books of reference at hand when using the catalogue. 



Fungi are propagated for the most part by very small bodies, 

 called spores. These in two large divisions of the order are 

 H 



