THE HONEY FUNGUS 165 
cover them with a few handfuls-of grass or bracken to 
preserve the moisture round the stools and maintain suit- 
able conditions for the germination of the spores. 
Perhaps the most convenient fungi for this purpose are 
Daedalea quercina, a bracket-shaped fungus with large 
labyrinthine pores on the lower surface: Hypholoma fasci- 
cularis, a toadstool not very unlike the honey fungus, but 
smaller, scaleless, and with greenish-brown gills : and Collybia 
velutipes, another tufted yellow toadstool with a black 
velvety base to the stipe. But there are many other species 
which by their commonness will commend themselves to 
the intelligent sylviculturist. 
Hartig recommends that attacked trees should be at once 
rooted out and all infected parts burned, and also that an 
isolation trench should be dug round such trees to prevent 
the spread of the rhizomorphs. This advice is ill-conceived. 
An isolation trench round an infected tree can never be 
actually harmful, but it is generally so much labour wasted. 
Symptoms of the disease are usually evinced in spring or 
summer, when transpiration is greatest and the needles die 
and shrivel up through lack of water. But steps cannot be 
effectively taken against the fungus till autumn, when the 
toadstools appear and show the extent to which the fungus 
has spread. It is then nearly always discovered that some 
stump near the dead tree is acting as a base of attack. 
A trench dug round the affected tree which does not also 
include this stump is about as much use as the isolation of 
a single cow with foot-and-mouth disease on a farm which is 
devastated by the complaint. The correct procedure is to 
dig up and burn the roots of an infected tree as soon as the 
attack is discovered, and to mark the place for treatment 
in the autumn. At the end of September further action 
should be taken. The first essential is to be able to recognize 
the fructifications of the fungus; it is thought that with 
the help of the description and photographs in this chapter 
any one unacquainted with it may familiarize himself with 
its distinctive features. Armed with this knowledge the 
area infected with the fungus can be surveyed, and all the 
