10 A. Barclay— On a Uredine affecting the [No. 1, 



account of it written immediately afterwards ; but its publication was 

 deferred in the hope tbat further opportunities might have been afforded 

 me of investigating its life history. This hope I have now reluctantly 

 abandoned, as my official engagements have not allowed me another 

 opportunity of visiting the forests in which it occurs. The above 

 description of its morphological characters in one stage of its existence 

 may however, prove of some interest and may attract the attention of 

 others with greater opportunHies and leisure than I have of following its 

 developmental history, and is therefore published as it stands. A con- 

 tinued study of it is much to be desired, if only from an economic pomt 

 of view, for the affection must prove very destructive to these valuable 

 timber trees. Apart from the diversion of nutriment it must occasion, 

 the habit it has of attacking new growing shoots and so completely 

 involving them as to destroy them must be most injurious to these trees. 

 I have on several occasions seen young trees (seedlings) not only with 

 their terminal shoots involved by it, but also with many of their lateral 

 shoots attacked at the same time. 



J\rofe.— After I had completed this paper I chanced to read, in an 

 Appendix (B) to Hooker's " Himalayan Journals," published in 1854, 

 of the occurrence in the Sikhim Himalayas of what may prove to be 

 the same fungus though in some respects the description given of it does 

 not agree with the characters of the form I have above described. It 

 is there stated :—" A very fine ^cidium also infests the fir tree 

 (Ahies smithiana) a figure of which has been given in the ' Gar- 

 dener's Chronicle ' 1852, p. 627, under the name ^cidium Thomsom. 

 This is allied to the Hexenbesen of the German forests but is a finer 

 species and quite distinct." I have unfortunately not been able to refer 

 directly to this paper, but am indebted to the kindness of a friend for 

 the following resume of it. The fungus was gathered by Dr. Thomson 

 at an elevation of 8,000 feet in the Northern Himalayas on Ahies smi- 

 thiana. The affected leaves are reduced in length nearly one half and 

 curved. The whole upper surface is occupied by one or more large, 

 elevated, more or less elongated sori sometimes disposed in two rows 

 " which must give the diseased tree a very strange appearance and at 

 length prove fatal. The spores are greatly elongated often exceeding 

 1 'f i^ length They were found to be mixed with mucedinous filaments 

 some of which were ready to fructify. " These were thought to be 

 extraneous and to belong probably to some Penicillimn. Driea specimens 

 like other allied parasites had a smell of violets. The paper is very short, 

 and the data given are not sufficient to allow of any decision being come 

 to regarding the identity of the f angus with the form above described. 



