A PRELIMINARY NOTE ON A NEW BARK 
DISEASE OF THE WHITE PINE 
Arthur H. Graves 
(With Plate 120, Containing 2 Figures) 
In the spring of 1911, Mr. Herman de Fremery, a student at 
the Yale Forest School, called the attention of the writer to a 
disease which appeared to be killing the young white pines in a 
plantation at the Maltby Lakes, near New Haven, Connecticut. 
Soon after this, a trip was made to the region in question. The 
stand consisted of Finns Strobus, from 5 to 7 feet in height, 
planted 6 feet apart each way, and just about to commence the 
ninth year of growth. In one spot, several trees were seen to be 
entirely dead, forming a blank of considerable area, on the margin 
of which others were found to be in various stages of the disease. 
In cases where the disease had not progressed far, the most 
apparent outward sign of the trouble was a slight yellowish cast 
of the foliage, which, from its strong contrast to the normal 
bluish-green of the healthy trees, could be readily detected from a 
considerable distance. To all outward appearances, the trunk was 
sound, but a careful examination showed that the extreme basal 
portion, which was often more or less covered with old dead 
leaves and needles, was somewhat sunken and covered with the 
minute black pustules of some fungus. The bark here was 
entirely dead, and often at this point the trees were entirely 
girdled, the lesions extending sometimes 3 or 4 inches from the 
ground (Plate 120, fig. 2). 
At the time, as an effort to determine whether the fungus was a 
true parasite, four inoculations were made in healthy trees. For 
this purpose, pieces of bark from the lesions on diseased trees 
were transferred to corresponding positions at the base of healthy 
trees where areas of healthy bark of similar size had been cut out. 
The edges of the patch of diseased bark thus inserted were 
covered with grafting wax to prevent drying out and con- 
tamination. 
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