184 Potato Diseases 



fungi. About the year 1885 the remedy bouillie bordelaise — bordeaux 

 mixture — used in the first instance and chiefly owing to the efforts of 

 Millardet, to combat the vine mildew in France, was adopted for other 

 plants and amongst others the potato. Under the name Stockfaule 

 (gangrene seche), Martins probably confused the dry-rot disease, now 

 known to be due to Fusarium, and the old potato disease or murrain 

 caused by Phytophthora infestans. This is not surprising since Fusarium 

 rot almost invariably supervenes after the attack by Phytophthora. 

 Krauselkrankheit, frisole or curl corresponds to the modern Blattroll- 

 krankheit or leaf-roll, but the name Krauselkrankheit appears to be 

 now used more frequently for a type of curl with crinkled leaves. Curl 

 is a disease of very long standing on the mainland of Europe and in this 

 island but it has caused much consternation on the Continent during the 

 last decade and has recently become a new potato problem for investi- 

 gators in the United States. Records of its occurrence in Britain are 

 to be found in the memoirs of the Caledonian Horticultural Society ^ of 

 one hundred years ago. The gale, or canker disease as it should now 

 be styled, is still prevalent in Europe and has been detected recently in 

 South Africa^ on potatoes forwarded to Rhodesia from Britain, and in 

 America. The true nature of the canker organism, Spongospora solani, 

 was established by Brunchorst^ in 1886. 



The most important additions to the list of British potato diseases 

 since Berkeley's time are the maladies known as tumour and sprain. 



The occurrence of tumour in Britain can be traced back as far as 1878 

 but the cause of the disease was not known until 1896, when an intra- 

 cellular parasite was discovered by Schilberszky in material said to have 

 been received from Upper Hungary and named by him i^krysophlyctis 

 endobiotica. Chrysophlyctis was thrice described within the space of a few 

 weeks in England in 1902, was chronicled as a Shropshire scourge in 1908 

 and scheduled under the Destructive Insects and Pests Act of 1907 in 

 the same year. 



Sprain, recorded by Frank^ under the name Buntwerden or 

 Eisenfleckigkeit in the list of diseases enumerated by him in Kampfbuch 

 in 1897, and only recently definitely separated as an entity from the 

 tangle of things insufficiently understood, is in all pr()ba])ilify of long 

 standing in Great Britain. 



1 Thomas Dickson in Mtm. Caled. Hort. Soc, i (1814). 



- J. B. Pole-Evans in Trans. Dcjd. Agric. Farmer's: Bull., No. 1 10 (I '.(10). 



•• J. Unuifliorst in Bcrgois Muscum.i Anrshcrctniiig (ISSfi). 



* Frank in Kuinpjhuch gegoi die SclUidlinxjie unsercr Fddfriiciilc (18!)7). 



