30 TWENTY-NINTH REPORT ON THE STATE MUSEUM. 
certain to answer to the description of Puccinia porphyrogenita, and 
an Atcidium on the leaves of the barberry, Berberis vulgaris, will 
scarcely be any other than @eidiwm Berberidis. 
A fact of still greater moment is, that some of our cultivated plants 
are attacked by fungoid foes which, minute as they are, materially 
diminish their vigor, impair their useful products and, in some 
instances, even destroy their vitality. Raspberries are attacked by 
the American raspberry rust, Uredo luminata ; pea vines, by the 
pea mildew, Lrysiphe Marti; oats and wheat, by the grain smut, 
Ustilago Carbo; plum and cherry trees, by the black-knot, Spharia 
morbosa, and lettuce and onions by their respective molds, Peronos- 
pora gangliformis and Peronospora Schleideniana. Such fungi 
must be regarded as injurious to the interests of the husbandman, 
nor is the pecuniary loss which they occasion trivial or inconsiderable. 
The loss produced by the potato mold alone, P’eronospora infestans, 
abundantly warrants all the effort and labor and study that have been 
devoted to the investigation of the history of the fungus and to the 
discovery of some efiicient means for preventing its attacks or over- 
coming their destructive consequences. 
On the other hand those fungi that infest noxious weeds and hin- 
der their dissemination and multiplication, must be regarded as the 
friends and allies of man. Thus the thistle rust, Z7¢chobasis suaveo- 
lens, an early state of Puccinia Compositarum, sometimes attacks 
the Canada thistle with great virulence, and so impairs its vigor as to 
prevent the development of the seeds, thereby checking the propaga- 
tion and spread of this pestilent plant. So, also, the troublesome 
bur-grass, Cenchrus tribuloides, is sometimes infested by a smut 
fungus, Ustilago Syntherisme, which not only prevents the develop- 
ment of the seeds of the grass but also of the annoying bur-like 
involucres. It may yet be found practicable to keep down this grass 
by the artificial dissemination of the spores of its parasitic fungus in 
those light, sandy soils where the grass usually abounds. It certainly 
is desirable that the life histories of these fungoid friends and foes 
should be better understood than they now are, and that the meaus 
of multiplying or diminishing their numbers according to their char- 
acter should be under the control of the farmer. 
With these thoughts in mind it has seemed advisable to group 
together the names of the parasitic fungi hitherto found in the State, 
with their supporting plants. The list of these is marked (6). 
