INVESTIGATIONS OF THE NARCISSUS DISEASE. 63 
spot of the leaves ; sometimes she could make cultures of a Fusarium 
living in diseased bulbs, but infection of sound bulbs had no results, 
except as it seemed in one single case. Miss Johanna Westlrdyk 
doubts whether the Fusarium, which appeared on the diseased bulbs, 
was indeed a parasite. She could not state whether the Fusarium 
on her bulbs of Narcissus was identical with F. bulbigenum Massee. 
"She found no chlamydospores in the leaves, as did Massee ; for the rest, 
the conidiophores and the conidia, which she studied on the bulbs, 
showed a great resemblance to those described by Mr. Massee, but 
the description of Mr. Massee's Fusarium bulbigenum is too in- 
complete for it to be possible to identify it with a certain Fusarium. 
"The symptoms of the disease of daffodils, ascribed by Mr. Massee 
to^ his Fusarium bulbigenum, show a very great resemblance to those 
which are caused in the last years to daffodils by Tylenchus devastatrix, 
which since some two or three years has begun to attack also this genus 
of bulbous plants ; and it seems very probable to me, that, in the 
case of Massee's disease of daffodils, the attack of Fusarium, when 
present, is only of a secondary character, i.e. that this fungus lives in 
the bulbs, sometimes also in the leaves, as a saprophyte, whilst the 
real cause of the disease is another, in most of the cases Tylenchus 
devastatrix. 
" So my opinion is that there exists no real Fusarium-disea.se in 
daffodils ; but should there be such a disease, I can state that I never 
have found it in Holland. From this you see that I am unable to give 
you any information on bulbs affected with Fusarium." 
I then wrote to Dr. Westerdyk, Director of the Pathological Labo- 
ratory of Amsterdam, asking her to enlighten me on certain points in 
the investigation. In her reply she informed me that she was engaged 
upon the study of Narcissus bulb diseases in general, but that she 
thought eelworm was the most serious, although it had only been known 
in Holland for one year. Contributions from Dr. Westerdyk have 
appeared in a Dutch trade paper, and I have to thank Mr. Peter R. 
Barr for his kindness in sending me a number of her articles which I 
received two or three days ago. On glancing through the contribu- 
tions it is surprising to see that England is persistently mentioned as 
being the original home of the pest, but how the eelworm can have been 
responsible for the havoc it has made there in one year I cannot say. 
So serious is the trouble that another investigator, Dr. Van Slogtare 
has been appointed by the Dutch Government to make a special study 
of the disease. 
Miss Welsford, working at the Imperial College of Science, has, 
I understand, now come to the same conclusion as Dr. Westerdyk, 
Mr. Hewitt, and others had already reached, and to which I was 
quickly forced by the results of the observations and experiments 
which I made at Wisley and elsewhere. 
The origin of the first outbreak of the disease in this country can- 
not be traced. Some growers say it came from Holland, but, as we have 
seen, the Dutch say we had it here first ; others say from Guernsey, 
