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shoot again in about 7 days. The disease appears to be a 
bark or leaf one as the death seems to start from the tip or 
tips of the branches and travels down the tree and if left 
alone in a short time will completely kill it. ” Of one spe- 
cimen he writes, “The tree I send you was alive 12 days ago 
and yesterday I had to cut it back four inches from the 
ground to get to healthy wood. The tree is little over 2 
years old. ” From this 1 gather that the disease is very 
rapid in action. 
In a later letter he says, “The fungus appears to be 
ripe in the wet season, and seems to be either dying or 
stationary during the now. dry season. Tne trees are plant- 
ed fifteen feet by fifteen in hilly land. The disease appeared 
in the neavy rains of March, April and May. The parti- 
cular tree I sent you was apparently wintering when I left 
for Singapore on 11th of May and was dead to within five 
inches of the ground on my return on the 23rd. It was 2J 
years old.” 
There can be no doubt that this fungus might prove a 
very serious pest especially in the case of large trees where 
in an estate it would be both difficult to detect at first and 
troublesome to get at. Planters should therefore in going 
over their estates watch very carefully to see if there are 
any trees beginning to go at the top, branches dying and 
blackening. If so they should be at once cut off and as 
quickly as possible burnt. They must not be left lying 
about, or the spores will be blown by the wind on to other 
trees. The spores in the specimens before me are extreme- 
ly abundant, and one fruit of the fungus contains enough to 
infect half the trees in the estate. Should this pest become 
aggressive* in an estate it might be advantageous to check 
it by spraying with Bordeaux mixture, which would destroy 
the spores, and this would be especially valuable in the case 
of big trees affected, as it is very difficult to cut back the 
end twigs in an adult Para rubber as the branches are too 
thin and brittle to bear an operator. 
For big trees a full sized spraying machine would be 
required as they rise to 60 or 80 feet in height; such a 
machine as is used in spraying orchards in America. 
In cutting back the infected boughs the planter 
must be careful to cut far enough back. The mycelium 
running in the cambium layer as it appears to do is pro- 
bably considerably below the point at which the sooty fruit 
is produced, and even below the point at which the bark 
appears definitely dead. I would suggest too that the bark 
of the infected tree round the place where the dead tree is 
