THE BUD-ROT OF PALMS IN INDIA. 223 



the Delta of the Godavari River. The cause of the disease was 

 stated, as a result of a field and microscopic examination, to be a 

 fungus belonging to the genus Pythium, a description of which, 

 under the name Pythium palmi vorum, was published in these Memoirs 

 in February, 1907. Subsequent investigation (the details of which 

 are given below) has confirmed this statement, and the disease 

 has been several times directly produced in healthy trees by inocu- 

 lating them with the fungus. A couple of cases of the same disease 

 were found in Travancore on the West Coast of India in 1907, and 

 there is little doubt that it was this fungus which was concerned in a 

 coconut disease in the same State, mentioned in the Indian 

 Forester in 1894 by Mr. A. M. Sawyer.' Up to the present the par- 

 ticular parasite which is the cause of bud-rot in India has not been 

 met with in any other country. It is, however, premature to say 

 definitely that the outbreaks mentioned above are all due to a cause 

 different from that in India ; there are as yet no published successful 

 inoculations with any other organism, and the fact that Pythium 

 palmivorum is not recorded in the diseased crowns does not alto- 

 gether preclude its presence, since it cannc-t be easily detected 

 except in the earlier stages of the disease. On the whole, it appears 

 likely that the disease in the New World is due to a different para- 

 site, while some at least of the outbreaks in the East may prove 

 identical with that in India. 



II. — Description of the area affected. 



The Godavari River, rising in the Western Ghats to the north- 

 east of Bombay, crosses the Nizam's Dominions from west to east 

 and bending southward falls into the Bay of Bengal about half way 

 between Calcutta and Cape Comorin, At Dowlaishweram, 40 

 miles as the crow flies from the sea, it divides into two main branches, 

 an eastern, called the Gautami Godavari, and a western, tlie Vasishta 

 Godavari. About two-thirds of th(^. way from Dowlaisliweram 

 to the sea, the Vasishta Godavari gives off from its left bank a third 



1 Quoted in Ferguson's " All about Coconut planting," Ceylon, 3rd Ed., 1904, 

 p. cxxiv. 



