76 PROTECTION OF WOODLANDS. 



that the disease was probably due to excessive formation of resin, 

 or canker of the soil. During the autumn the sporophorons 

 receptacles (mushrooms) make their appearance on the dead plants 

 Scots Pine, Spruce, Larch, Weymouth Pine, often breaking out 

 with their honey-coloured heads (pttei) in large numbers around 

 the stem of the plant, though not on all the plants attacked and 

 killed, and producing the spores that are carried elsewhere by 

 wind, animals, &c. On beech-stumps they occur numerously, and 

 with much larger pilei as edible mushrooms. 



Although older stems also succumb to the attacks of this 

 fungus, by far the greatest damage is done by it in young crops. 

 Characteristic features of its occurrence are the dying off of the 

 plants here and there in patches, and also the rapidity with which 

 plants in excellent growth are attacked and killed off, after having 

 perhaps during the same year developed very good growth in 

 height. Thus damage arising from this cause is at once distin- 

 guishable from that occasioned by insects, drought, and the like, 

 when individual plants gradually succumb after a period of sickly 

 growth. Such blanks, often occurring in considerable number 

 and extending over large patches, may sometimes render replant- 

 ing and filling up of the blanks necessary for several years in 

 succession ; this should if possible be done with broad-leaved 

 species only, as conifers are more exposed to a recurrence of the 

 danger. 



The best practical means of preventing the spread of the disease 

 appears to be the pulling up of the plants attacked with all their 

 roots and burning them, and the isolation of the infected spots by 

 digging small trenches round them about 1 to ij ft. in depth, so 

 as to hinder the extension of the mycelial filaments under the soil. 

 Careful collection of the larger mushrooms on old stumps is also 

 to be recommended, and none the less on account of their be in- 

 edible. 



Tlie Oak-seedling fungus (Rosellinia quercina) attacks the roots of 

 young 1 to 3-year-old Oak seedlings, especially in nursery 1 

 and occasions fading and drying up of the plants. The i 

 appear to be woven round about with fine filaments, in the vicinity 

 of which the bark-tissue turns brown, whilst black pustules about 

 the size of a pin-head make their appearance here and there on 

 the main root. The further spread of the disease, which is favoured 

 by damp weather and hindered by dry, can be obviated by t.ln 1 



