72 



It may be well to glance at what lias been written on the sub- 

 ject in Italy. The earliest reference known to me is that of Ru- 

 dolphi in Linnaea, 1829, where the Endothia is said to grow on 

 Quercus Ilex, Q. pubens and Castanea vesca. Later accounts 

 were given by Cesati and De Notaris in 1863 in their Schema and 

 the Sphaeriacei Italica, where there is a good description and a 

 rather crude figure apparently drawn from somewhat immature 

 specimens, for the spores are represented as one celled, although 

 in the description they are said to be sometimes obscurely two- 

 parted. The fungus is said to be common on dried branches and 

 denuded roots of oaks and chestnuts in Northern Italy and to 

 occur also on elms. 



Italian specimens were distributed in Rabenhorst's Herbarium 

 Mycologicum, Thuenienis, Mycotheca Universalis and Saccardo 

 Mycotheca Yeneta ; but in the copies which I have examined the 

 specimens had spermogonia but no asci. The most recent notice 

 of the fungus in Italy is that of Traverse in Flora Italica Cryp- 

 togama, in 1906, who uses the name Endothia gyrosa. It is said 

 to grow on Aesculus, Alnus, Carpinus, Castanea, Corylus, Fagus, 

 Juglans, and Quercus, and to occur not only in Europe and 

 North America but even in Ceylon and New Zealand. 



We have early notices of the fungus in France. In 1830 Fries 

 stated in Linnaea that he had received it from that country and 

 Tulasne in his Carpologia, Vol. II, 1863, gave a long notice of 

 the fungus, which he says grows on Carpinus, with critical notes 

 on the synonymy of the species. In 1870 Fuckel recorded its 

 appearance as rare on Alnus at Oestrich in Nassau, and Winter, 

 in 1886, in Eabeuhorst's Crytogamen Flora, stated that the En- 

 dothm grew on different deciduous trees in Germany. The 

 records of the fungus in France and Germany are less satisfac- 

 tory than its record in Italy, and the specimens distributed from 

 the former countries in exsiccati are few and poor. 



From this rather long account of the history of the chestnut 

 fungus in Europe, we may draw the following conclusions : Our 

 chestnut tree fungus is widely spread in Europe and is common 

 in Northern Italy, where it was first noticed as long ago as 1829. 

 It is of interest to notice that writers are very generally agreed 

 that it grows on bark, dried branches, and dead roots, rather 

 than on living branches, and the hosts on which it is said to grow 



