176 DISEASES OF FIELD & GARDEN CROPS. [en. 



Since Professor De Bary's paper was published, other 

 good observers have made experiments, some with a result 

 pointing in one direction, some with a result pointing in 

 the opposite one, and others with a negative result. Many 

 botanists hold that the case is proved, and that the con- 

 nection of the two fungi is certain ; others, as Dr. M. C. 

 Cooke, one of the foremost fungologists of this country, 

 still hold the connection of the two parasites as unproven. 

 The latest exponent of the connection of Uredo with its 

 Puccinia and j*Ecidium is our friend Mr. C. B. Plowright, 

 M.R.C.S. This gentleman has made two sets of experi- 

 ments. In the first his results were negative, or, as he 

 himself says, they seemed to show that the barberry fungus 

 had very little to do with corn mildew. In the first series 

 of experiments in which spores of ^Ecidium Berberidis, 

 Pers., were placed on wheat plants, 76 per cent became 

 infected with rust, and amongst the wheat plants which 

 were kept as checks on the infected ones, no less than 70 

 per cent became spontaneously diseased with rust. After 

 his later experiments Mr. Plowright altered his first- 

 expressed opinion, and now he strongly advocates the 

 connection of the two parasites. We consider the pub- 

 lished change of opinion favourable to Mr. Plowright as 

 an observer, for it is not every one who has sufficient 

 independence of mind to so frankly and quickly publish 

 such a radical change of thought. Mr. Plowright is to be 

 trusted to a far greater extent than men who have advo- 

 cated erroneous theories, and then quietly ignored their 

 former teachings without acknowledging their error. Mr. 

 Plowright has published a series of engravings, mostly 

 from nature, illustrative of the subject before us. All 

 the illustrations are original but one, and that one is the 

 crucial one of the spores of the fungus of corn mildew 

 germinating on and sinking through the cuticle of the 

 barberry leaf. In this illustration (Gardeners' Chronicle, 

 19th August 1882, p. 233) a large open organ of trans- 

 piration is shown close to three germinating pro-mycelium 



