NOTES ON INDIAN FORESTRY IN 1905. 135 
obvious signs of the disease in the shape of sporophores, while 
no doubt at least other 10 per cent. were also infected, though 
not yet showing externally the fructifications of the fungus. 
To those who think of India as being only a hot country, 
instead of (as it actually is) a vast empire with all varieties of 
climate, from very arid to extremely wet, and from excessively 
hot to intensely cold, it will be surprising to learn that in the 
forests of the din, or belt fringing the southern outliers of the 
Himalayan range, “ about 75 per cent. of the forest-clad area of 
the din (in this instance the Dehra Dun, where the Imperial 
Forest School is located) suffered considerably from the abnor- 
mal frosts during January and February of this year. . . . Poles 
from 1 to 2 feet in girth have been killed to within 5 to 15 feet 
from the ground, while those under 1 foot in girth have been 
killed to within a few feet from or down to the ground itself. . . . 
The injuries that the forests have sustained must represent the 
loss of at least ten to fifteen years’ growth.” Coppice areas have 
suffered severely, though new stool-shoots have been flushed; 
but young seedlings, in fairly dense forest, seem, fortunately, to 
have escaped. 
Of other parasitic diseases of conifers common to Europe and 
India, Homes annosus attacks the deodar in the Himalayas, and 
one of its characteristic features there is its extension by rhizo- 
morphs, while these organs have not yet been described for the 
same fungus in Europe, either because they do not exist, or because 
they have hitherto escaped attention. But the majority of the 
parasitic diseases in Indian forests are probably entirely different 
from those in Europe, though not much knowledge on the sub- 
ject has as yet been acquired. These matters are now, how- 
ever, being gradually investigated by the cryptogamist to the 
Government of India, along with similar questions relating to 
the fungous diseases affecting agricultural and other crops. 
