18 DISSEMINATION OF PARASITIC FUNGI 



aiul tilio black rot, aro oicUuarily hold to have been introduced 

 on American vine stocks which were extensively imported 

 during the struggle against Phi/Uoxera. The mildew is common 

 but only moderately destructive on the wild American grape 

 vines ; against black rot, too, some of the American species, 

 such as Vitis rotimch'folia , are highly resistant ; wliilo the 

 oidium has never been known in America to cause such 

 appalling losses as it did in France from 1852 to 1854, when 

 it reduced the yield to one-tenth oi one-t^^ entieth of the 

 normal. But for 300 years all attempts to accl'uratise Vitis 

 vimfera in the United States failed, and it was only by 

 improving the native species, which resist these local diseases, 

 that success in viticulture was ultimately attained. 



o* 



The great coffee " boom " in the East during the second and third 

 quarters of the nineteenth century led to the ra])id extension 

 of cultivation of the bush throughout all the eastern colonies 

 of European states. It is practically certain that this was 

 accompanied by some importation of the berries from the older 

 coffee-growing localities, such as Arabia and possibly East 

 Africa, where (in the latter at least) the coffee leaf disease was 

 probably long established, as it has since beeii found widely 

 distributed on indigenous East African varieties. The first 

 recorded outbreak was in Ceylon in 1868, and the following 

 are the dates on which it was fomid elsewhere : — Mysore 

 1869 ; Sumatra and Java 1876 (when was still confined to the 

 western part of Java) ; Natal probably 1878 ; Fiji Islands 

 1879 ; Mauritius about 1880 ; Eeunion 1882 ; Philippine Islands 

 1885 ; Madagascar before 1886 (said to have been first intro- 

 duced by a Ceylon planter in 1872 or 1873, during a visit 

 to examine into colfeo-growiug in that Islard)^ ; Tonkin 1888 ; 

 Malaya and Borneo reported in 1888 ; Sanroa 1891. Owing to 

 the comnianding position of the Ceylon industry, it is probable 

 that most of these places were infected from that colony ; 

 thus it is said to have reached Samoa direct from Ceylon,^ 

 and the Fiji Islands seem to have been infected by means of 

 a box of seeds packedjn earth,'received from"" the same source 



1 Fauchere. U Agric. Prat. d. Pays Chauds, 1907, p. 509. 

 *Reinecke, F. Tropenpflan^er, VI, 1902, p. 632. 



