48 BULLETIN 727, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURRE. 
layer of the seed. After this, the seed is thoroughly washed in a 
screen and dried in flats in the open or in a drying room. In the case 
of fermentation in pits, the seed may be dried without washing. By 
some growers, the fermentation process is now omitted. 
During the process of crushing and separating, the exterior of the 
rind becomes thoroughly drenched with the abundant juice from the 
crushed fruits, and it is inevitable that the spores should be washed 
from the fruit lesions into the juice which goes through with the seed. 
Conditions at the Ohio farm were very interesting in this respect. A 
considerable percentage of the fruits being ground bore anthracnose 
lesions, and, although the latter were not sporulating to any great 
extent, there appeared to be plenty of opportunity for wholesale con- 
tamination of the seed by the spores of the fungus. Similar condi- 
tions prevailed in the Michigan seed field visited in 1917, where a much 
larger percentage of the seed fruits was diseased. 
In an attempt to prove that anthracnose spores were present in the 
seed and juice as it issued from the grinder and in the liquid in fer- 
menting barrels filled the same morning, cultural tests were made at 
the Ohio farm. Test-tube water blanks were used in place of dilu- 
tion flasks and sterile caubrated pipette droppers were used in place 
of pees Two series of six plates each were poured, using water 
agar plus 2 per cent dextrose. No anthracnose colonies appeared. 
The heavy seeding of bacterial and fungous colonies in these plates 
showed, however, that the liquid tested comiered an abundant and 
varied flora: 
On October 6, 1917, a number of diseased seed ene. one of 
which is shown in Plate VIII, were collected at a seed farm and 
brought to the laboratory, where the seeds were removed by hand 
the next day. To simulate as closely as possible the conditions in 
the commercial operation, the seeds, juice, and rinds were mixed 
together in a jar and then the larger rind fragments were removed. 
_The material in the jar was allowed to ferment for two days in the 
laboratory. The gas produced yielded a froth which buoyed up 
numerous rind fragments. In such diseased fragments thus caught 
and held at the surface the fungus was found to be producing new 
acervuli and sporulating in abundance, thus greatly increasing the 
amount of infective material in the liquid. 
The period of fermentation might allow the spores to germinate, 
but it is probable that the anaerobic conditions would prevent this. 
In case germination did occur on the wet seed, adherent appressoria 
would quite likely result. It is not considered at all likely that the 
biological action during this short period of fermentation would kill 
the spores. The washing process would remove by no means all of 
the spores from the seed, since the surface of the latter is not smooth 
but is covered with cellulose hairs. During the process ef drying in 
