42 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



been written ; and I should have been considerably poorer by the 

 lack of some most instructive botanical experience." 



Explanation of Plate 523. 



Figs. 1-3. D. macrantha Endl. 1. Adult plant showing its attach- 

 ment to a supporting stem. 2. Youug plant showing the true scales, the 

 phyllodes or basal scales, and the successive movements of the unfolding 

 leaves and their tentacles. 3. Eipe seeds ( x 6). 



Figs. 4-6. D. stricticaulis 0. H. Sargent. 4. Adult plant. 5. Young plant 

 at a stage corresponding to that of D. stricticaulis shown in fig. 2. 6. Various 

 forms of the ripe seeds (x 6). Figures nat. size unless otherwise stated. 



MYCOLOGICAL NOTES.— II.* 

 By W. B. Grove, M.A. 



Puccinia Caricis. This is the best type to take for a student 

 commencing the study of the Uredinese. If objection is made 

 that it is not sufficiently common everywhere, it may be replied 

 that it can easily be introduced wherever it is w T anted. The 

 following is a record of an experiment to support this contention ; 

 it also serves to throw light upon the question of spore- dispersal. 



Near Birmingham there is one locality in which this species 

 has existed for the last thirty years ; it appears in great abun- 

 dance without fail every year. The place is a shallow pool in a 

 roadside spinney, filled with Carex yaludosa (acutiformis) and 

 surrounded by a quantity of nettles. On the other side of the 

 road, not more than one hundred yards away, in a similar spinney, 

 is another pool, provided also with Carex and nettles, but here the 

 Puccinia had never been seen in any of its stages, and since the 

 place was visited regularly by a class of students it is apparently 

 certain that the fungus had never occurred there during all these 

 years. One can only surmise that the thick belts of trees and 

 bushes, one on each side of the road, intervening between the 

 pools, had hindered the conveyance of the spores. About three 

 hundred and fifty yards away in the exactly opposite direction is 

 another similar pool, surrounded by abundance of nettles, but 

 having no Carex ; here, also, the Puccinia (of course in its 

 ascidial stage) had never been seen. Let us call these pools A, B 

 and C ; B lies to the west of A, and C to the east ; the trees are 

 so placed that B is open to the west and A to the east, but C is 

 surrounded by trees on all sides. 



In January of this year (1912) a bundle of about five hundred 

 dead Carex stems and leaves, richly covered with sori, was 

 removed from A and laid down by the edge of B, right in the 

 midst of a part where the dead stems of nettles were abundant. 

 In February a similar bundle was placed about three yards to the 

 west of another bed of nettles, then just showing, also by B. 

 When the spot was visited on April 27th, the nettles round the 

 first bundle were covered with a rich abundance of the aecidium, 



• See Journ. Bot. 1911, 366. 



