515 
AGRICULTURAL BULLETIN 
OP THE 
STRAITS 
~ AND 
FEDEPATEP MALAY STATES. 
ii] 
SOVEMBBB, 1908. 
[Vol. VII- 
A ROD dE OF FARA (HEVE^ BRAZILI- 
AN SIS) RUBBER TREES. 
By W. J. Gallagher, m.a. Government Mycologist, f. m. s. 
A fungus, which attacks the roots of Para Rubber trees with fatal 
results, appears from the number of communications received by the. 
department of Agriculture to be fairly common at present over this 
^ linsula. It is doubtful if there is an estate free from it. as its 
presence, even when it has killed trees, often remains unsuspected. _ 
The disease is seldom distributed over an entire estate, bur -s 
confined to limited areas in which at first a tree here and there is 
attacked. Half a dozen or more vacancies 
when, owing to a misconception o th* cause of de ■ 
reasons, no preventive measures were' taken on the death of the first 
tree. The trees succumbed cne after another as the cjmease spread. 
The ‘supplies” were failures too ; planted in a soil fu o j£ rea jt 
the fungus they were s*° 011 attacked by jt and either never s nic 
or died shortly after doing so. On these infected areas the mortality 
is! <if ten as high as thirty trees per acre, but for a whole estate the 
yearly average is probably not a tree per acre. I have seen only one 
particularly bad instance; in 400 acres of trees* two and a half >ears 
old, about five tier cent had died, and two dead trees were never 
adjacent. The incidence is heaviest on peaty souls, and where there 
has been a bad burn. ., . ,. 
The disease occurs among trees of from fifteen to thirty months 
old I have not noticed it on trees older than two and a half years. 
Nursery plants of a few months old may be attacked, and will quickly 
succumb if a source of infection is at hand. 
Symptoms. 
The disease is not .discovered, as a rule, until the tree is dead. 
The first symptoms are somewhat as follows: The leaves of a healthy - 
looking tree suddenly become brown, jfrst round the edge and especi- 
ally at the tips, and the entire leaf scon loses its natural colour: this is 
iw- 
