59 



than that he should be disappointed, I searched for a pustule containing these 

 multiseptate spores, for two hours one evening, and one-and-a-half hour the next 

 morning, before I could find one. At last I succeeded, and sent the example off 

 by post at once. Hence, these polymorphic spores must be very unusual, and I 

 consider myself fortunate to have hit upon a plant that bore them. Besides, this 

 success singularly confirms, in my mind, the figures given at plate 75, by Dr. 

 GrevUle, in his Scottish Cryptogamic Flora of Puccinia Variabilis. He draws the 

 spores as being, in some instances, more than uniseptate. May he not, by good 

 fortune, have hit upon examples in which the spores of the Leontodon Taraxacum 

 were eccentric, just as I did on the spores at the stems of the Conium Maculatum ? 



On the 21st of April, I visited the spot where the Puccinia had so singularly 

 grown, but all the originally infested stalks, etc., were gone utterly. The Conium 

 looked very healthy, but not one Puccinia could be found ; nevertheless, the 

 Trichobasis, which is an Uredo form of the plant, was very abundantly scattered 

 over the leaves. 



My next journey to the place was a few days after the field had been mown 

 for hay, and the Conium was cut down. However, on the 29th May, I found the 

 plant elsewhere in my parish, when it had but very few Trichobasis spores ; they 

 were much more of the true Uredo type. 



At the end of July, 1876, 1 was staying at Aberystwith, and found plants of 

 Conium bearing the Puccinia and the Uredo, the former on the stems and stalks, 

 the latter on the leaves. 



Here then, we have a part of the life-history of the Puccinia Conii from 

 the beginning of March to the end of July. In March, the Puccinia, was in 

 perfection. So vigorous was it, that it utterly sapped the life out of its host. 

 Fresh leaves of the hemlock grew ; these produced the Trichobasis at the end of 

 April. On the 29th of May the Uredo prevailed, whilst in July there was the 

 Puccinia. But there is, in some respects, a vast difference in the Puccinia of July 

 and that of March. The July form grows in round, oval, or elongated patches, 

 and when elongated, grows up the stem. It is small, and covered with epidermis 

 of the Hemlock for a considerable time, and, at length, bursts through it with diffi- 

 culty, a process which makes the spores themselves rather smaller than in the 

 early spring plant. It does not distort the stem materially, if at all. The colour 

 of the epidermis has, perhaps, a little more blue than in the other case. 



Now see the March form. The patches are not round ; they seem to assume 

 any shape except that of regularity. They are large, very large, and do not 

 appear to have the slightest difficulty in getting through the epidermis of the 

 Hemlock. They blister the stem fearfully, making large bullate patches ; they 

 twist the stem into all sorts of shapes, except straight, and very soon kill the 

 Hemlock. 



Probably our German friends would make two species of these plants, but, 

 with all deference to them, I cannot help thinking that our English mycologists 

 would keep them just as they are. If an explanation be asked for the exceeding 



