20 THE LARCH CANKER ‘ 
cause of canker was discovered by M. J. Berkeley,1 who 
published a short article on the diseases of the larch in the 
Gardener’s Chronicle for 1859. The canker which he described 
was found in a specimen ‘forwarded by Sir Walter C. 
Trevelyan in which mycelium has penetrated through the 
bark and produced its proper Fungus, under the form of . 
Peziza calycina. In a small plantation, most of the gee 
of which are young, nearly all are more or less attacked on 
stem or branch with the Peziza.’ 
Berkeley’s observations were characteristically direct and 
accurate, and he demonstrated the following features of 
the disease. (i) In affected portions the cambium is first 
killed in winter, since inside the canker the year’s wood is 
always complete. The cambium must thus have been 
destroyed after the formation of the summer wood and 
before that of the spring wood. (ii) The growth of the 
cambium in the spring and summer is sufficient to counteract 
that of the fungus, but each winter more and more of the 
cambium is destroyed, so that a section of the cankered 
portion shows a step-like arrangement of the wood, one 
step corresponding to each year; or, as Berkeley described 
it, the wood is like an amphitheatre with its seats raised 
one above another on each side of a central depression 
(see fig. 12). (iii) The actual wood inside is attacked, but 
‘it should seem that the disease does not originate from 
the wood, and that the fungus is introduced into the wood 
1 Miles Joseph Berkeley was born April 1, 1803, near Oundle in Northants. 
He was educated at Rugby and Christ’s College, Cambridge, and took 
Orders in 1826. In 1829 he went as curate to Margate; and found time to 
study the anatomy of molluses, and later, seaweeds. From 1833 to 1868 
he was perpetual curate at Apethorpe and Wood Newton and lived at 
King’s Cliffe, Northants, and from 1868 till his death in 1889 he was vicar 
of Sibbertoft, near Market Harboro’. Berkeley wrote the volume on 
fungi in Smith’s English Flora (1836), and described (with Broome) the 
fungi collected by Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle, as well as other 
collections. He also published « number of books, chiefly on fungi, and 
many articles from his pen appeared in the Gardener’s Chronicle and 
elsewhere. His writings are characterized hy extreme care and Incidity 
(vide Dictionary of Naticnal Biaqraphy, vol. xxii, 1901). 
