130 
Mycologia 
which has come to be generally known as “ the blister rust of 
white pine,” and has been connected by numerous cultures in 
Europe and America with the Cronartium on Ribes. The pres- 
ence of the aecial stage {Per. Strobi) in North America has been 
known only since 1909 when it was imported in nursery stock from 
Germany and widely distributed, especially in the northeastern 
states. The rust on the Ribes has been known for a somewhat 
longer period. The first record was a collection of the uredinial 
stage on Ribes longiflorum (reported as R. aureum ) in Kansas in 
1892. Definite observations on a sufficient scale to indicate its 
establishment in this country date back only to 1906 when Stewart 
found the uredinial stage in the currant plantation of the Experi- 
ment Station at Geneva, N. Y. Since that time it has been re- 
ported in various localities. There is no information at hand 
which is of assistance in explaining the early isolated occurrence 
in Kansas. Through Mr. W. H. Rankin, of Cornell, we learn that 
recently (spring, 1913), two white pine trees, about fifteen years 
old, have been found at Geneva with evidence of old infection of 
the blister rust. 4 One tree is said to show signs of having been 
infected when very young and long cankers, almost girdling the 
trunk, have spread upward from the lower whorl of branches, 
where infection took place, a distance of about three feet. The 
fungus was fruiting in abundance this spring (1913) on the newly 
invaded tissue at the edge of the cankers. The fact that this must 
have been fruiting several years ago will assist in accounting for 
the original epidemic at Geneva, as well as for more recent out- 
breaks there. 
The condition which obtains in North America with regard to 
this species is a peculiar one. The white pine, a native only of 
this continent, was not originally afflicted with a rust disease but 
upon being extensively grown from seeds in European nurseries it 
became subject to this extremely damaging species which was later 
imported to its native country by nursery stock. It is so serious 
in some parts of Europe that the culture of the white pine has had 
to be abandoned. The same condition will doubtless be reached 
4 This is mentioned by Spaulding, Phytopath. 4: 4 (1914) in an abstract 
of a paper entitled “ Notes on the white pine blister rust,” and also by 
Stewart and Rankin, Phytopath. 4: 5. 1914. 
