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sides willi small l)la('k specks aiul streaks, (lie external appearance 

 of which showed most resenihlance with the perithecia peculiar to 

 LeptoMrowa ov Jjeptothyrlvni. 



The plants sent to me, provided with a hei-e and there i-amified 

 tap-root of about 1 decimetre length and 1- o millimetres thickness, 

 proved on ciosoi- inspection to have much sulfercd, since in various 

 places the hark was loose from the wooden kernel, if it was 

 not entirely lacking. These circumstances justitied the supposition 

 that the young pine-trees iiad succumbed under the attack of the 

 Fusa}'ium-\^\ïl\\\\G\^ and that the Leptostronui- or Leptothyrlum- 

 individnals had chosen the sickly, lingd-ing or dying needles as the 

 seat of their fatal activity. 



The /'^7/.sv/r///;/^-cushions that had remained were little numerous, 

 1 — 3 mm. in diameter and had a light rosy tint. Lacking suitable 

 objects for investigation, I had to restrict my answer to the com- 

 munication that here \ery likely Fv sarin m roseiim had been acti\e, 

 and I left the further elucidation of the devastation caused by that 

 fungus to the care of Prof. Ritzema Bos. 



A closer examination of the very numerous specks and streaks 

 found on the needles of Finns austriaca, induced me, on account 

 of their generally elongated, sometimes more, sometimes less hysterium- 

 like shape, their little tendency to loosen at the circumference 

 and to fall off, the fact that nowhere a i)arenchymatic structure 

 of the ]ierithecium-wall could be distinguished and that the l)asidia 

 had not developed, to think rather of the genus Lcptostroma than 

 of Leptothi/rium, and l)esides to mark the fungus as non-described 

 and to give the name Leptostroma n/istrifunun to it in order to 

 distinguish it from other fungi. 



One of the characteristics of IjeptostnniKi ((iistriacnm is that the 

 perithecia are never united to continuous series, l)ut rather form 

 greater or smaller groups of streaks or small shields, which dilfer 

 greatly among each other in size, and are rather dull than glossy. 

 Their length varies from Vs h) 1 mm. and their breadth from Y» ^^ 

 7,5 niin. Their perithecium-wall is "halved", as the term is, does 

 not reach further than the epidermis of the leaf, and consecpiently 

 has the shape of a cupola. This wall has no foundation or basis. 

 Moreover it is black, carbonaceous and structureless, so that there 

 can be no doubt that we have here a cuticle (Fig. 2 and 3), from 

 which follows that the s|)ace, occu|»ie(l by spores, rests on the epidermis, 

 as is clearly shown by Figs. 2 and 3. By reasoning more even than 

 by observation, one is lead to the conclusion that the s|)ores are 

 produced by a very thin layer of threads extending over the epidermis. 



