GERMAN NOTES. 21 3 



8. Syringing may or may not be necessary year after year, and 

 not always to the same extent. The extent required can be 

 ascertained by studying the progress of the disease in spring. 

 The beginning should be made as soon as the first apothecia 

 ripen. Observations to this effect should be started early in 

 July. If scab shows itself at all, the youngest cultivations 

 should be syringed without fail, as the most dangerous disease 

 centres are formed within them almost inperceptibly. 



I offer no excuse for having absorbed the greater part of the 

 space granted for my German notes with Haak's Biological 

 Studies of the Pine Scab. The importance of the question and 

 the convincing experiments and conclusions, many of which are 

 new, suffice to justify this, and it would be almost impertinent to 

 dismiss them with a few words. 



The late Nun moth pest still occupies the " tar ring '' and the 

 "no tar ring'' factions. Whatever may be the result of the 

 paper war, it seems quite evident that no administration will have 

 sufficient moral courage to drop the precaution as soon as indica- 

 tions of a recurrence of a Nun calamity are observed, though at 

 present many of them talk big and maintain that the late successes 

 in Saxony were due to special conditions and luck, especially 

 in regard to the abrupt ending of the pest, which came quite 

 unexpectedly and at least two years before its course would have 

 been run under normal conditions. They maintain that the ring 

 battle against the Nun larvae is quite inapplicable to the extensive 

 pine forests of the plain forests in Eastern Prussia. As regards 

 this the forest world must wait and see, it is to be hoped for 

 many years, but the measure will certainly be tried again even 

 there, and this time at the beginning of the attack, and ultimate 

 conclusions may then be drawn from the result. 



The formation of an annual conference at Eberswalde of 

 leading forest-officers, with a view to amalgamating theory and 

 practice, has been one of the most important occurrences of 

 late years in German forest history. The staff of the Eberswalde 

 Forest Academy greeted the proposal enthusiastically at once, 

 though fully aware that it would entail much additional labour, 

 but it seemed doubtful whether the outside interest in the scheme 

 would suffice to ensure success, or whether those most successful 

 in practice would not resent it as an attempt to bring them back 

 to school. However, the applications after the publication of 

 a programme were so numerous that it was found necessary. 



