Mr. pREUDWKILEK to whom I showed the specimens, said lie bad 

 seen the fungus in Sumatra on a lew trees and had noticed that it 

 was all in a line of trees as it the spores had been blown along by 

 the wind. lie found that by scraping the bark and treating with 

 copper sulphate and lime. 01 course a pest like this should be 

 looked lor and vigorously treated, tin- destroyed bark cut away 

 and burned, affected boughs removed and sulphate of copper 

 liberally used. It is pjjobable that too close: planting may be res- 

 ponsible for the development of this fungus, as the similar one on 

 the Strobilanthes was in the dark part of the bush where the 

 boughs were crowded together. 



Foni.cs semitostus.— Some eight or nine years ago the coolies 

 carelessly made a large bonfire close to a row of Para rubber 

 trees, of fairly large size, the trunk of one of which was badlv 

 burnt and another considerably injured. Both trees gradually died 

 and were removed. But the next two or three trees on cither side 

 became sick and eventually a large mass of the fruiting stage of 

 Fomes semitostus was seen at the base of the trunk just pushed up 

 above the ground and the roots being destroyed the trees perished. 

 This year two more smaller trees have gone in the same way, and 

 it is clear that the fungus has been slowly spreading underground. 

 Attempts were made to check it by treatment with copper sulphate 

 and lime, but as the fungus had got a strong hold of the roots of 

 the tree treated and it was very difficult to get at all the infected 

 part, this was not successful. The development of the damage- 

 was very slow, and very different from the rapid growth of such 

 underground fungi as Rosellfflia. Nor did it attack any young 

 plants, seedlings or any other herbaceous things on the ground as 

 the true root fungi do. 



The fruiting part [sporopkore) of Fomes semitostus is a broad Hat 

 rounded plate often very irregular in lorm, usually reniform 4 to 6 

 inches across, and of an orange red colour beneath paler above, 

 where it is marked with rings and fine striae, beneath can be seen 

 with a lens the honeycomb-like structure of the hymeneal surface. 

 The texture of the fungus is tough and it possesses a strong mush- 

 room-like scent. The sporophores growing close together often 

 form large irregular masses. 



This fungus is very common on decaying stumps of all kinds ol 

 trees and is properly speaking a dead wood feeder, but like a 

 number of allied species attack also living trees. • 



As a disease-fungus I would class this as contagious as opposed 

 to an infectious fungus, as it appears to spread from root to root 

 in the ground without being dangerously dispersed through its 

 spores. A dead stump may be attacked above or just below the 

 ground, and the mycelium spreading along the decaying roots may 

 come into contact with those of a living tree and so the attack is 

 spread. These contagious fungi are more easy to deal with than . 

 the infectious ones, of which the spores are blown from tree to tree 

 and attack the plant where they light, fas in tin- fungus previously 



