252 THE PROTECTION OF WOODLANDS. 



October, and are most numerous in damp seasons, the pale flesh-coloured 

 stalk of the mushroom showing a yellowish-white ring of skin at the 

 point of rupture below the cap. The white spores produced in autumn 

 develop long branching purplish or brownish - black cord - like strands 

 (rhizomorpha) spreading singly like rootlets throughout the soil, as well 

 as below the bark of the dead stump saprophytically attacked, which 

 invade the tissues of the roots they come in contact with ; and (as in 

 Fames annosus) the rhizomorphs from diseased roots spread around and 

 attack the roots of healthy trees, so that the disease becomes centrifugal 

 and epidemic. The disease can only be prevented or checked by collecting 

 the mushrooms saprophytic on stumps, and pulling up and burning all 

 the roots of infected trees, and filling up the blanks with broad-leaved 

 trees. Infested patches can be isolated by trenches 1 to 1^ ft. deep, but 

 this will only be efficacious if the fructifications of the rhizomorphs can 

 be collected along the inside of the trench before they ripen. Another 

 species of Agaric, the Beech branch-tuft, A. mucidus, appears chiefly at 

 branch-forks of Beeches. 





