100 



Mycologia 



dence of any direct relationship between this particular organism 

 and the death of the horses has been shown, the fungus has been 

 thought worthy of study and record on its own account. 



Gross Characters of the Mold 

 It is generally known that silage insufficiently packed or too 

 dry when cut is much more apt to mold than that which is moist 

 and well compacted. The material brought to the laboratory was 

 much drier than usual, and matted together by mold into large 

 masses which offered considerable resistance to being torn apart. 

 Examination showed all parts of the silage, leaves, stalks, and 

 ears, to be covered with a white layer of mold, forming cottony 

 masses in some of the spaces. Where it occurred on the kernels 

 of corn, particularly where they had been broken or crushed and 

 the starchy endosperm exposed, the mold often assumed a pink to 

 carmine-red color. 



Isolation and Cultural Characters 

 Silage agar. Five hundred grams of fresh silage was boiled 

 for thirty minutes in one liter of tap water. This was then 

 filtered and the silage on the filter washed with hot tap water 

 until a liter of the decoction was secured. This was autoclaved 

 with one and one half per cent, agar agar threads, filtered, tubed, 

 and sterilized. Dilutions were prepared from the silage mold at 

 points where conidia were found most abundant. These conidia 

 germinated within twenty-four hours in most instances. The 

 mold colonies in the lower dilutions did not develop very far on 

 account of the luxuriance of bacterial growth. In the other 

 plates, however, the bacterial colonies were scattered so that they 

 did not interfere with the normal development of the mold. The 

 inhibition of mold growth in the presence of large numbers of 

 bacteria is a possible explanation of the fact that moist silage 

 decays without becoming moldy through the activity of bacteria, 

 while silage somewhat drier becomes covered with molds. With- 

 in the course of a week these mold colonies were from one half 

 to one and a half centimeters in diameter. The outlines of the 

 colonies are very indefinite, for the organism grows almost 

 entirely within the substratum, forming there conidia and peri- 



