THE WILT DISEASE OF PIGEON-PEA. 43 
No. of plants. Treatment. Date of sowing and| Result. 
inoculation. Remarks. 
About 25 plants in | Not ino culated | Sown 13-6-08. | No deaths up 
2 pots. (control). | to 4-9.08. 
| 
22 plants in 2 pots. | Inoculated with) Sown and inocu-|No deaths up 
a mixture of the| lated 1-11-08. | to 16-3-09. 
above bacillus | 
and Neocosmos- | 
pora from pigeon- 
pea. 
About 25 plants in | Inoculated with a|Sown and inocula- | Wilt appeared. | Ist death on 
2 pots. mixture of the} ted 13-6-08. 10-7-08. All 
above bacillus | | were dead by 
and the parasitic | | October, ’0S. 
Cephalosporium. 
The bacillus itself or m conjunction with Neocosmospora is un- 
able te cause disease. When combined with the parasitic Cephalos- 
porium it causes no apparent change in the rapidity of appearance 
and nature of the disease caused by the latter. It has not been 
seen in the tissues and so presumably is present in small numbers. 
A quite similar bacillus was obtained from the roots of healthy 
jute plants in the same manner. What part these organisms 
play when present in such roots is unexplained. 
In all these inoculation experiments, carried out with no less 
than four distinct organisms found more or less regularly associated 
with the disease, one and one only of the four has been found defin - 
itely parasitic. The other three are harmless. Were it not that 
two of these three possess stages in their life-history closely 
resembling the true parasite, and frequently occur intermingled 
with it, there would have been no need for the laborious testing in 
pure separate cultures of the various organisms. It appears clear 
that much of the work that has been done with Fusarium wilts 
has met with the same difficulties, and in so far as these difficulties 
have not been allowed for, so to the same extent the work is 
unreliable. It may be said definitely that no case of parasitism 
attributed to Fusarium or Cephalosporium stages of Hypocreaceous 
fungi can be accepted unless successful inoculations have been car- 
ried out with ascosporal strains. Similarly none of these conidial 
