260 MobBbN S'OKEST ECONOM^E. 



that the Rdssthau always comes upon the black pine with- 

 out auy preceding honey-dew, and in so far as it is con- 

 cerned, it is a parasite and no saprophyte. The injury 

 done by it, however, is by no means great. One thing 

 which therefore appears of importance is that, as up to 

 this time no preventive or remedial measure has been 

 devised for this often widespread epidemic producing 

 fungus, at least none applicable to it in the open air, it 

 must be left to jump about at its own sweet will, without 

 man being able to interfere to prevent it. 



.' The most remarkable fungus infesting the black pine is 

 one recently studied, and described in the reports on the 

 Vienna forest, the Goniotheca Austriacum, Thuem., or the 

 Austrian Stauhhaufenpih. Upon leaves still to a great 

 extent green and healthy, but partially of a yellow hue, 

 may be observed long patches, extending to the length of 

 a centimetre, dirty brown in colour, with well defined 

 edges, in the centre of which is found a correspondingly 

 long, and proportionally deep, hollowed dark-coloured 

 furrow. This furrow is for the most part filled with a dry 

 resinous substance, on the surface of which grows a fungus 

 mycelium, but neither on the bason nor sides of the furrow 

 are any traces of this to be seen. The resinous substance 

 is, probably through the combined influence of the atmo- 

 sphere and of the fungus, of a blackish colour ; and it 

 exhibits growing spore-heaps on a poorly developed, creep- 

 ing, brown mycelium. The constituent spores or cells vary 

 in shape from a globular to a compressed elliptical form, 

 and in position from solitary ones, to an agglomerated 

 mass of numbers connected by short branching chains. 

 This fungus, easily distinguishable from other species, was 

 first discovered on sunny slopes not far from Liesing, in 

 Lower Austria. There were here only remains of a former 

 forest, consisting only of a number of decaying black pine 

 perches, of about the height of a man, sending out from 

 the ground shrub-like branches. The resinous furrows 

 were found sometimes at the bases, sometimes at the points, 



