ON A SEEIOUS DISEASE IN THE CHERKY ORCHARDS OF KENT. 315 
years. The varieties of Cherry trees that have been reported as specially 
liable are Waterloo, Bigarreau, Frogmore, Napoleon, Blackheart, Cluster, 
and Elton. Turk and Governor Wood have not as yet suffered much, 
and English and Flemish reds and May Duke have not been attacked, 
though odd trees of other varieties, such as Bigarreau, growing among 
them have been diseased. In one orchard the disease attacked " Water- 
loo " first, soon spreading to other varieties, while at another place this 
variety had not been affected until last year, and then only the leaves had 
suffered, the fruit had not been damaged. 
Professor Frank, of Berlin, has described, in Gartenflora, 1887, pp. 2 
and 51, a serious injury to Cherry trees which, there is little doubt, is the 
same as the disease that has attacked the Cherry orchards in Kent. The 
malady was first observed in the Cherry orchards of the Altenland, on the 
lower Elbe, in Germany about the year 1880, and it soon spread widely. 
About the middle of June yellow spots make their appearance on the 
leaves, and at the same time the young Cherries begin to fail. They are 
stunted in growth, and the flesh of the fruit forms irregularly, or rotten- 
ness sets in so that the Cherries are quite unsaleable. 
Professor Frank found an abundant mycelium in the tissue of the leaf 
underneath the yellow spots, and also in the damaged Cherries. During- 
the summer small perithecia, filled with long curved spores, were developed 
on the yellow spots. The diseased leaves remain on the tree all winter, 
and are intermixed with the new foliage of the following season. In 
spring he found on the dead leaves a fungus fruit that had not been 
present on them in autumn, a perithecium round at the base, about one- 
twelfth of an inch in diameter, tapering up into a pointed beak that pro- 
jects from the under- surface of the leaf. These perithecia contain the 
spores that re-infect the young leaves and fruit. The fungus had already 
been described by Auerswald, under the name of Gnomonia ery thro stoma. 
Fig. 163. — Fragment or Leaf of Cheiiky Teee 
SHOWING GeOUPS OF PARASITIC FUNGI. 
