172 
SPICES 
CHAP. 
The worst attacked trees are those on bad, stiff, 
yellow clay soil, exposed to full sun. A tree grow- 
ing beneath a large Para rubber tree was but little 
damaged, though the parasite was present. This tree, 
however, appears to be over-shaded, as, though quite an 
old tree, it has, as far as I know, never flowered. The 
soil it grows in is, however, better and richer than that 
in which another tree about 50 yards away is growing, 
and which is in a bad state from the attacks of this 
alga. At the same time it must be mentioned that 
trees exposed to full sunlight, though growing in 
fairly good damp soil, are badly affected, and that 
manuring with cow -dung, though producing a good 
renewed growth of leaves and buds, does not seem to 
have any permanent effect in restraining the growth 
of the pest. 
I am inclined to think that the actual shading of the 
tree has more to do with the check of the pest, as 
young seedlings planted under shade in lines in a wood 
partly cleared for the clove plant seem quite free from 
the disease. 
The fungus is very destructive to seedlings, and I 
have lost a great many at times, though care was taken 
to disinfect them from time to time with copper sulphate. 
These seedlings were not only grown in beds or nurseries, 
but also in flower-pots, but when put out in exposed 
hot positions the buds were soon infected with the 
disease, and very soon the little plant died. 
Badly infested trees do not flower, and are therefore 
from a planter s point of view valueless. I noted at one 
time that in the case of a tree badly infested with this 
pest, no flowers were produced on any part of the tree 
except on a branch that happened to have grown into 
the branches of a shade tree [Sterculia elata), whose 
large leaves protected the clove branch from the full 
heat and light of the sun. This branch for some years 
produced flowers regularly in February and March, but 
by some chance the protecting bough of the Sterculia 
was cut away, and since then no flowers have appeared. 
