48 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



veteran microscopist, Mr. F. Barnard, of Kew, is still with us, after 

 whom Phragmidium barnardi on the Native Raspberry was 

 named, and seeing that this species is not confined to Australia, 

 as was formerly believed, but has been found upon the same host- 

 plant in Japan, it opens up an interesting question of geographical 

 distribution. 



Some Noteworthy Forms. — Berkeley, in a paper in the Journal 

 of the Linnean Society, London, for 1872, "On Australian Fungi," 

 has remarked : — " The collections on the whole can scarcely be 

 said to be of any great interest, except as far as geographical 

 distribution is concerned, as the aberrant forms are few." But, as 

 far as the rusts are concerned, there is at least one genus which 

 is unique, and that is Uromycladium. It is only known from 

 Java outside of Australia, and is confined to species of Acacia 

 and Albizzia. It was so peculiar in its structure, and so different 

 from any rust previously observed, that it had to be placed in a 

 new genus. The great characteristic of this genus is that each 

 single stalk does not bear a solitary spore, but carries one or two 

 spores with a colourless vesicle or cyst, or, as in two species, it 

 bears three spores, forming a head. It is characteristically Aus- 

 tralian, inasmuch as it serves as a connecting link between 

 Uromyces,with a solitary spore at the end of a stalk, and Ravenelia, 

 with a head of many cells and several vesicles or cysts at the 

 base. There are seven species at present known, and the genus 

 occurs in all the States. Two of the species likewise form galls, 

 which are very destructive to some of our wattle plantations, and 

 in one instance the gall reached a weight of 3 lbs. There is one 

 peculiarity about this genus which may point a moral to field 

 naturalists, and that is that it was so long overlooked, especially 

 since one of the commonest species is Uromycladium tepperianumy 

 which in some places around Melbourne forms galls on almost 

 every hedge of Acacia armata. It was taken for granted — and I 

 must cxy peccavi myself — that the galls were due to insects, and 

 the moral provides a motto for us all — " Prove all things." 



Another noteworthy form is an Aecidium on Wallaby Grass. 

 You will understand how peculiar this is when I state that only 

 one other instance of it is known, occurring on a species of Stipa 

 in Argentine, Chili, and California. While grasses are favourite 

 hosts for the rusts, the aecidial stage is conspicuous by its 

 absence. 



There is just one other peculiar form which may be mentioned, 

 peculiar inasmuch as this is the first notice of it for Australia. It 

 is not unusual among the forest trees and shrubs of Europe to find 

 shoots very much deformed and distorted, and looking at a 

 distance like large birds' nests or brooms, and to these the popular 

 name of witches'-brooms has been given. These peculiar and 

 diseased conditions were difficult to account for, and so the idea 



