PAPERS ON BIOLOGY AND AGRICULTURE 131 



City, Illinois, for a new disease called ''take-all" or "foot 

 rot", one of the scouts of the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture 

 found a few stalks infested with a smut, which until 

 then, was not known to occur in the United States. An 

 intensive survey during the next two years revealed the 

 presence of this disease in a number of fields in Madison 

 and St. Clair counties, and every effort is noV\' being 

 made to restrict it to these counties and finally entirely 

 eradicate it from the western hemisphere. Had this 

 diseas-e been unobserved for a few more years, there is 

 little doubt but that it would have become established 

 in an area of our wheat belt that would have rendered 

 its eradication as hopeless as the other smuts of wheat. 



In some cases new diseases may cause unnecessary 

 alarm. It is important, therefore, to present as accurate 

 an account as possible of the disease and estimate its im- 

 portance according to the experiences of growers where 

 the disease is prevalent. That it may behave differ- 

 ently, i. e., be more serious or of less importance, in its 

 neAv home due to changed environments is a fact recog- 

 nized by plant pathologists. 



The diseases given below are of no great economic 

 importance with the exception of the leaf scorch of 

 strawberry which may become in a few years one of our 

 most serious strawberry diseases. To date we have had 

 few diseases of this delicious and valuable fruit which 

 seriously interfered with its development. In fact, the 

 diseases are of such minor importance that spraying 

 strawberries is not practiced in any section of the state. 

 Judging by the eft'ects of the leaf scorch on our variety 

 plantation at the University it is evident that it will be 

 necessary to hold the disease in check on certain of the 

 most susceptible varieties or give up hope of growing 

 these varieties. 



APPLE 



Rough Bark {Phomopsls Mali Boh.) 



A twig of apple showing a roughened condition of the 

 bark was received from Ralph Wemper, Assumption, 

 Christian County, in March, 1921. On the rough bark 



