Plant Sanitation. 



44 



[July, 1912. 



My advice to all intending exhibitors 

 is to give plenty of timetotfcis subject, 

 and h ave all the names printed in a good, 

 clear type. It would be of the greatest 

 assistance to the jurors, to the reporters, 

 and also to the visitors. For myself, I 

 should feel inclined to take off marks for 

 bad naming, where there is otherwise 

 little to chose between one exhibit and 

 another. 



The names should not, of course, be 

 made too prominent, Without putting 



them out of sight, it is possible to avoid 

 an unsightly appearance by placing 

 them low down in the front of each 

 individual exhibit. One often sees a 

 photograph of an exhibit in which the 

 name-cards are the most prominent ob- 

 jects in the group, which is, of course, 

 absurd. 



In the case of pot plants, the card 

 should be placed as near the pot as 

 possible. 



J. H. 



PLANT SANITATION. 



PINK DISEASE IN JAVA. 



(Ueber die Djamoer— oepas-Krankheit 

 and ueber das Corticium Javanicum 

 Zimm. by Dr. A. Rant.) 



"Pink disease," caused by Corticium 

 salmonicolor B. & Br (- Corticium Java- 

 nicum Zimm.), has long been known 

 in Java under the native name of 

 " Djamoer-oepas," and has engaged the 

 attention of the scientific Department 

 from time to time during the last twenty 

 years. Zimmermann gave a full descrip- 

 tion of the disease, particularly as it 

 affects coffee, while Zehntner, Wurth, 

 and Bernard have dealt with it on other 

 cultivated products. Now appears 

 another paper on the same disease, 

 chiefly in its relation to cinchona, by Dr. 

 A. Rant, the botanist of the Java cin- 

 chona plantations. 



Dr. Rant enumerates 141 species of 

 wild and cultivated plants which are 

 known to be attacked by this disease. 

 To this list another can be added, for the 

 fungus has recently been found on 

 Camphor (Cinnamomum camphora) in 

 Ceylon, a host which is not given by 

 Rant. It is interesting to note that it 

 occurs on Cacao in Java, while there is 

 no record of pink disease on that plant 

 in Ceylon. 



Dr. Rant's paper is an excellent contri- 

 bution which clears up many doubtful 

 points and rounds off in a masterly 

 manner the work of previous investi- 

 gators. Seeing that the f ungus has been 

 recorded on so many different plants, he 

 set himself the task of discovering 

 whether all these fungi were really the 

 same species, and, if so, whether there 

 existed any " biologic" forms. In other 

 groups of fungi, e.g., the Uredinece and 

 Erysiphacew, it has been proved that 

 fungi which are morphologically indis- 

 tinguishable yet differ in their ability 

 to attack closely related plants. Mar- 

 shall Ward, for example, proved in the 

 case of Puccinia dispersa, which was 

 supposed to attack all species of Bromus, 

 that the fungus on Bromus sterilis 

 would not infect Bromus mollis, while 

 that on Bromus mollis could only rarely 

 attack Bromus sterilis ; and similar 

 cases have been demonstrated by Eriks- 

 son. Again Marchal pointed out that 

 the oonidia of Erysiphe graminis on 

 wheat are not able to infect common 

 barley, oats, or rye ; and in this group 

 further instances of this specialised para- 

 sitism have been discovered by Salmon, 

 These discoveries have led to the concep- 

 tion of " biologic " species, i.e., species 

 which are morphologically exactly alike 

 but are not able to infect the same 

 plants. The application of this to the 

 present case is obvious* The fungus 



