384 Howard. — On some Diseases of the 
at the margins of the older ones and gradually spreads to 
the centre of the bunch in from four to six weeks. As soon 
as this drying of the leaves is well marked, the stem of the 
cane shows a brown discoloration in one or more places, 
after which the rind shrivels up and the discoloration rapidly 
extends in all directions. On splitting such canes the tissues 
are seen to be of a general reddish colour, in which darker 
red areas can be seen. Very frequently these darker regions 
contain definite white centres, elliptical in vertical section. 
The major axis of the ellipse is at right angles to the main 
axis of the cane stem. The appearance (Fig. 2 ) coincides 
exactly with that figured by Went (6, 14) in his writings on 
the ‘Red Smut’ disease of Java. Infection seems to take 
place in many cases at the tunnels made by boring-insects, 
but in a good many instances it appears to have started at 
the old leaf-bases. Two Fungi are very common on such 
diseased canes — the Melanconium described above, and a 
second form which is not very often seen in the earlier stages. 
This second form occurs as minute, black, velvety patches on 
the outside of the cane, generally just below the leaf-base, 
or on the sleeping roots above the node (Fig. 1 ). These 
patches are stromata bearing dark hairs. At the base of 
the hairs, crescent-shaped, unicellular conidia are given off 
from short basidia. The infected tissue contains colourless 
mycelium, in which fusion of the hyphae is very common 
and in which the contents appear as a row of circular oily 
drops. In the older portions of the affected tissue, brown 
chlamydospores are to be seen in the hyphae, which also turn 
darker in colour. All these appearances agree with the 
fungus causing the ‘ Red Smut’ disease of Java described by 
Went (6, 14). 
In view of the result of the inoculation experiments with 
Melanconium , described above, it appeared desirable to culti- 
vate this second fungus and to study its parasitism. This 
was done, and hanging-drop cultures containing a single spore 
were made by Marshall Ward’s method (3), using the cane- 
extract medium given above. 
