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shoot again in about 7 days. The disease appears to be a 

 bark or leaf one as the death seems to start from the tip or 

 tips of the branches and travels down the tree and if left 

 alone in a short time will completely kill it." Of one spe- 

 cimen he writes, ' i The tree I send yon was alive 12 days ago 

 and yesterday I had to cut it back four inches from the 

 ground to get to healthy wood. The tree is little over 2 

 years old." From this I gather that the disease is very 

 rapid in action. 



In a later letter he says, "The fungus appears to be 

 ripe in the wet season, and seems to be either dying or 

 stationary during the now dry season. The trees are plant- 

 ed fifteen feet by fifteen in hilly land. The disease appeared 

 in the heavy rains of March, April and May. The parti- 

 cular tree I sent you was apparently wintering when I left 

 for Singapore on 11th of May and was dead to within five 

 inches of the ground on my return on the 23rd. It was 2\ 

 years old." 



There can be no doubt that this fungus might prove a 

 very serious pest especially in the case of large trees where 

 in an estate it would be both difficult to detect at first and 

 troublesome to get at. Planters should therefore in going 

 over their estates watch very carefully to see if there are 

 any trees beginning to go at the top, branches dying and 

 blackening. If so they should be at once cut off and as 

 quickly as possible burnt. They must not be left lying 

 about, or the spores will be blown by the wind on to other 

 trees. The spores in the specimens before me are extreme- 

 ly abundant, and one fruit of the fungus contains enough to 

 infect half the trees in the estate. Should this pest become 

 aggressive in an estate it might be advantageous to check 

 it by spraying with Bordeaux mixture, which would destroy 

 the spores, and this would be especially valuable in the case 

 of big trees affected, as it is very difficult to cut back the 

 end twigs in an adult Para rubber as the branches are too 

 thin and brittle to bear an operator. 



For big trees a full sized spraying machine would be 

 required as they rise to 6Q or 80 feet in height; such a 

 machine as is used in spraying orchards in America. 



In cutting back the infected boughs the planter 

 must be careful to cut far enough back. The mycelium 

 running in the cambium layer as it appears to do is pro- 

 bably considerably below the point at which the sooty fruit 

 is produced, and even below the point at which the bark 

 appears definitely dead. I would suggest too that the bark 

 of the infected tree round the place where the dead tree is 



