A NOTE ON INDIAN WHEAT-RUSTS. 
105 
leaves, are leaves of the normal rosette. In such a case the leaf 
undergoes a very rapid growth in thickness and often in length and 
breadth, assuming an etiolated and sickly appearance and having the 
indentations along its margin obscured or oblitexated. Occasionally 
also the rachis of an inflorescence is found to be thickened in this 
manner and to assume the characteristic etiolated appearance that 
indicates the condition. But much more usually neither the leaves 
of the rosette nor the normally produced flower-branches are at all 
affected ; one or more of the buds already mentioned as remaini^ng 
undeveloped in the axils of the outer leaves of the rosette suddenly 
develop into diseased shoots, occasionally bearing malformed flowers, 
but much more usually having only malformed leaves. And smoe- 
times it is found that in cases where a rhizome has several heads 
the others may be quite normal or at most bear only uredospores or 
telentospores or both, while one head is entirely malformed from the 
point where it rises from the ground, all its leaves and shoots being 
converted into aecidia-carrying organs. 
Whatever the precise morphological origin of the part may be, 
its consistence is similar and its history is identical. A shoot of 
the axillary type may by the fourth day of its special growth have 
become 6 inches long; whatever size it may attain it does not after 
the fourth day appreciably increase in size. On the third day the 
etiolated surface shows the presence of small papilla scattered fairly 
uniformly over it, these by the fifth day appear as an eruption of round 
miliary bodies of a fine purple colour which presently open at their tips 
and become converted into small cups filled with pale lemon-yellow 
aecidiospores. These aecidiospores could be seen occasioiially dis- 
persed by puffs of wind ; unlike the uredospores they did not mix 
with water. 
Sometimes the malformed shoots with aecidial fructifications 
remained, after the dispersal of the aecidiospores, as shriveU'ed very 
fragile structures. More usually, however, within three or four days 
of the ripening of the aecidia the whole shoot became soft, black and 
putrescent, sinking to the ground and rapidly damping off the 
general health of the plant meanwhile remained apparently un- 
affected. 
At Mozufferpur, selected as a representative locality for North 
Debar, which was visited on February 2ist, the state of affairs as regards 
both wheat and Launea were very similar to those prevailing at 
Shibpur, The wheat was not however so badly affected by rust as in 
Lower Bengal : every plant was not affected and none were very 
severely attacked. The' ^*rust*^ was here found in every case to be 
