THE LARCH CANKER 21 
from the bark’. (iv) The discase occurred most frequcntly 
in damp situations. (v) Berkeley observed that the Peziza 
also occurred on many dead branches and ou branches that 
had been left on the ground after thinning. 
Recent authors have commonly lost sight of the fact that 
canker was first attributed to its truc cause by an English- 
man, and Berkeley’s article has often been ignored . by 
writers who have taken their descriptions from the more 
detailed papers of the German professors Willkomm and 
Robert Hartig. Willkkomm’s! treatise, published in 1867, 
is, for the time at which it was written, a remarkably full 
account of the parasitology and pathology of the disease. 
But it is marred at the outset by an inaccuracy in nomen- 
clature, which he would have avoided had he been acquainted 
with Berkeley’s article. His description and figures leave 
no doubt that he was studying the fungus Dasyscypha 
calycina, but he confused this species with another fungus, 
Corticium amorphum, a Basidiomycete, belonging to an 
entirely different group of fungi, which has a superficial 
resemblance to Dasyscypha and may sometimes be found 
growing with it.’ If this error in nomenclature be corrected 
throughout the paper, the reader will find an accurate 
record of much that was not previously known about the 
1 Moritz W. Willkomm was born June 29, 1821, at Hewigsdorf near 
Zittau. He studied medicine and science at Leipzig. He travelled over 
w gieat part of Europe, taking a special intcrest in field botany, and wrote 
extensively on the flora of Spain and Portugal. He took his Ph.D. at 
Leipzig in 1850 and remained there as a Privatdozent. In 1855 he was 
created extraordinary professor and custodian of the herbarium. Soon 
after he was appointed professor of biology in the Forstakademie at 
Tharandt, where he remained till 1868, when he proceeded to Dorpat as 
director of the botanic garden. In 1874 he went to the German university 
at Prague and stayed there till 1893, when he retired. He died in Bohemia 
in 1898. Willkomm is chiefly known for his writings on the flora and 
ecology of Spain and Portugal, but he published papers on many other 
botanical subjects. His Microscopischen Feinde is, as far as I am aware, 
his only contribution to pathology (vide Allg. Deutsche Biogruphie, Bd. 43, 
1898). 
2 — (1868) was the first to call attention to this error. He 
correctly named the fungus Peziza calycina. 
