392 Howai'd. — On some Diseases of the 
appearance during the ripening period. Sometimes, however, 
the young canes do not respond to the early rains of the wet 
season in June and July, practically making no growth and 
remaining dwarfed. Instead of the twelve to fourteen broad 
green leaves of normal canes the affected shoots bear from 
six to ten pale-green narrow leaves, the oldest showing a 
tendency to dry up from the apex and margin. Even after 
rain, when the soil contains much moisture, the young leaves 
in the centre of the tuft assume the vertical position and 
partly fold up by the inrolling of the two halves of the lamina, 
in the manner described and figured by Wakker (9). This 
device for preventing over-transpiration is only made use 
of by healthy canes during drought, but in those in question 
it is constantly apparent and at once suggests water starva- 
tion. The stunted canes never recover, but struggle on, 
throwing up large numbers of shoots from the buds at the 
base of the stem. These new shoots in turn become affected 
like the parents and a clump of dwarfed canes results, resem- 
bling one of the phases of the ‘ sereh 1 disease of the sugar- 
cane in Java (14). The diseased canes occur in circular 
patches, which, however, are not sharply marked off from the 
normal areas, but gradually shade off into them. 
It is in the second-crop canes or rattoons of the lowland 
districts especially that the trouble indicated above is to be 
seen on the large scale. Often the whole field is uniformly 
affected, and the contrast between it and a neighbouring first- 
crop field is most striking. In the former case, the narrow, 
pale-green, erect and partly folded-up leaves are few in number 
and the clumps of cane do not meet in the rows ; in the 
latter, the leaves are broad, dark- green in colour, and bend 
to the breeze with the lamina flat and fully exposed to the 
light. Here the canes meet fully in the rows, and, when 
viewed from above, look like solid masses of green. The 
striking difference between first and second crops on the 
lowland areas is so general that it seems to have been accepted 
by the planters as part of the ordinary course of things. 
The general impression seems to be that the soil is not suited 
