73 



are not merely cliestiiuts and oaks but a considerable number of 

 deciduous trees. Yet, although the fungus has been so well 

 known in Ital}', Avhere it is in sonn; x>l5^H-es certainly common, 

 there is no record whatever of any serious disease of the chestnut 

 due to it. The chestnut, wliich is a tree of great economical im- 

 portance in Italy, is subject to a good many diseases which have 

 been carefully studied by the Italian pathologists but, so far as 

 I know, not one has suggested that any is due to the Endothia. 

 Were it a fact that the Endothia, whatever specific name we 

 please to call it, is a s]»eci('s endemic in Italy but not found in 

 North America until the ai>[)earance of the present epidemic, we 

 could understand why the fungus might cause a serious disease 

 in this country although it causes no trouble in Italy, for, if in- 

 fected plants were imi^orted from Europe, tlie fungus, as in other 

 well known cases, might be transferred to our native chestnuts 

 which unlike the chestnuts of Italy have not become immune, 



Italian botanists did not and do not regard their chestnut En- 

 dothia as merely an endemic species but consider it to be the 

 same as ^pltdcrla nidicalls described by Fries in 1828 from 

 North American specimens collected by Schweinitz. We learn 

 from Schweinitz, in his North American Fungi, that the species 

 was very rare on roots of Fagus in North Carolina. The syn- 

 onymy is too complicated to be followed here but some reasons 

 why it is so complicated should be stated. Prior to the publica- 

 tion of aS'. rmUcaUs, Schweinitz had in 1822 described a Sphacria 

 (jyrosa from North Carolina said to grow on Fagus and Juglans. 

 Later Fries made this species the type of a ucav genus, Endothia. 

 The earlier Italian writers regarded >S'. (jyvosa and aS'. radicaUs 

 as two distinct species, apparently basing their opinion on the 

 fact that Fries placed the two in different sections of the old 

 genus Hphdcria rather than on an examination of American 

 specimens of the two species, Traverso and some later writers, 

 however, consider that the so-called two species are really only 

 two different stages of a single species. It ap])ears to me that 

 their opinion is quite possibly correct, but the question can be 

 settled definitely only by an examination of original Schweinit- 

 zian specimens. Thanks to the kindness of Dr. Stewartson 

 Brown I have been alloAved to examine the specimens in the 

 Schweinitzian Herbarium in the Academy of Natural Sciences 



