ENGLISH DISEASE OF MANGOLDS AND SUGAR-BEETS. 



A disease of mangolds and sugar-beets ascribed to bacteria has been reported from 

 Saxlingham, Norfolk, England, by R. H. Biffen, of the University of Cambridge. The first 

 signs are on the leaves, which turn brown and die, while the inner leaves become a sickly yel- 

 lowish-green and are much wrinkled. The signs of the disease usually appear first on the 

 edge of the leaf-stalk. The roots of diseased plants are dry and tough, and all the vascular 

 bundles in both roots and leaf-stalks are purplish-black and plugged with a mucilaginous 

 mass containing a large number of bacteria, "which in all probability have been responsible 

 for the disease." The tissue surrounding the bundles becomes brown and dried. The 

 bundles of healthy plants are cream-colored. The disease does not actually kill the roots, 

 however, as specimens removed from the field and grown in the greenhouse lived, but were 

 stunted and poorly developed. Mr. Biffen thinks that this is the disease described by 

 Kramer on fodder-beets in Russia [Austria] and by Sorauer on sugar-beets in Germany. Its 

 external signs, he says, are also similar to those of a sugar-beet disease in the United States 

 in which the sugar-content of affected roots is smaller than that of normal roots. Probably 

 what we call "curly- top" is here referred to. 



There is no mention of cultures or inoculations, but it is stated that the disease is still 

 under investigation. From a conversation with Mr. Biffen in 1906, the writer inferred that 

 not much additional attention had been given by him to the etiology of this disease. 



LITERATURE. 



I9or. BIFFIN, R. H. A disease of mangolds and sugar-beet. Cambridge University Department of Agriculture. 

 Third Ann. Rep. on experiments with crops and stocks, etc., pp. 87 and 89 (in all, i page). 



BLIGHT OF YOUNG ROSE SHOOTS. 



In June 1907 Mr. Charles F. Wheeler brought to me from Lanham, Maryland, a few 

 rose shoots, showing a blackening and death of the unopened buds and of the pedicels. 

 No fungus was found, but bacteria were present in abundance. On studying paraffin- 

 embedded, stained sections of the pedicels, most of the bacteria appeared to be confined to 

 the vascular bundles. The organism was not isolated, or at least not studied in pure culture. 



In the summer of 1909 Dr. William T. Councilman, pathologist of Harvard Medical 

 School, observed the same or a similar disease on some of his roses at York Village, in Maine. 

 The affected stems were cut off and the disease did not reappear that season. He described 

 the bacteria to me as filling the vascular system. 



BACTERIA IN VESSELS OF FLAX STEMS. 



In Dutch literature Dr. Ritzema Bos has mentioned finding bacterial plugs in vessels of 

 dying flax. In this he was mistaken, according to his statement in reply to my letter asking 

 for further information about it. 

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