36 BULLETIN 934, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
lings received by Prof. William T. Home, from Sonoma County, 
Calif., with the statement that the disease was seriously affecting 
the stand. The fungus was easily isolated, and the results of suc- 
cessful inoculations on pine with the cultures obtained are included 
in Table V (p. 47). A fungus resembling P. debaryanum was 
also found in damped-off cowpea (Yigna sp.) seedlings grown in 
rotation with pines at a Nebraska nursery. 
Pythium equiseti Sadebeck, reported as parastic on the prothallia 
of Equisetum arvense, was successfully used by Sadebeck (117) in 
crude cross-inoculations direct from E. arvense to potato tubers. 
De Bary (5) reversed the direction of the experiment between 
cryptogamous and phanerogamous hosts by successfully inoculating 
prothallia of Equisetum arvense with Pythium debaryanum directly 
from diseased Lepidium seedlings. He also secured positive results 
on prothallia of the fern Todea africana by the same method. The 
Equisetum prothallia he found to be especially favorable media on 
which to develop Pythium debaryanum. Fischer considers the 
fungus found by Bruchmann (17) and Goebel (49) on prothallia of 
Lycopodium sp. as probably identical with P. debaryanum. A care- 
ful reading of the original articles is sufficient to show that the sym- 
biotic fungus which they described was an entirely different or- 
ganism. Saprolegnia schachtii and Sporodospora jungermanniae, re- 
ported on two of the Hepaticse, are of doubtful position (42, p. 403), 
though Butler (23, p. 89), after a survey of the literature, apparently 
favors the view that the former is distinct from the damping-off 
fungus. De Bary (5) reported Vaucheria and Spirogyra apparently 
immune against P. debaryanum. 
Early references to Pythium debaryanum in connection with 
gynosperms seem to have been based on the probability that it 
would be found to be the cause of damping-off in conifers (6; 97; 134, 
p. 27). The first actual finding of the fungus in any g} 7 mnosperms 
of which the writer is aware is indicated by a label marked Pythium 
debaryanum in the handwriting of Mrs. Flora W. Patterson on a 
package of coniferous seedlings from a New York nursery collected 
in 1904. 4 The seedlings, judging from the several rather long cotyle- 
dons and the fact that both cotyledons and primary leaves are denticu- 
late, are probably of one of the species of Pinus having medium-sized 
seed. In 1908 Dr. R. J. Pool, of the University of Nebraska, and his 
student, Mr. H. S. Stevenson, obtained in culture from damped-off 
coniferous seedlings a nonseptate fungus which was probably 
Pythium debaryanum, but which formed no distinctive spores on the 
media on which it was grown. A year later the writer obtained the, 
fungus from pine seedlings at the same nursery and reported it as 
4 In the Office of Pathological Collections, United States Bureau of riant Industry. 
