W or maid. — ‘ Brown Rot ' Diseases of Fruit Trees . 365 
the brown rot of apricots, e.g. Faes ( 1914 ), Chifflot and Massonnat ( 1915 ), 
Peglion ( 1917 ). 
Bonorden in 1851 introduced the name Monilia cinerea for a form 
which he found ‘ auf faulenden Friichten ’ ; as in the case of M. fructigena , 
Schroter, in 1893, referred it to the ascomycetous genus Sclerotinia. 
In spite of Woronin’s well-known papers of 1898-9, in which he 
submits convincing proof that Sclerotinia fructigena and S. cinerea can 
be readily distinguished even in the Monilia stage, other investigators 
refuse to accept his conclusions, and consider that ‘ Brown Rot ’ diseases 
of our cultivated fruit trees are caused by one species only, i.e. S . fructigena. 
Thus Frank and Kruger ( 1899) 1 say, ‘ Auch der von Woronin fest- 
gehaltenen Unterscheidung von Monilia fructigena Pers. und M. cinerea 
Bon. konnen wir wegen der Ubergange ihrer Merkmale nicht beistimmen, 
ein Standpunkt, auf dem auch Behrens und Wehmer zu stehen scheinen 
Eriksson ( 1913 ) also writes, 2 ‘ Ich mache hier keinen Unterschied zwischen 
Monilia cinerea und M. fructigena , da eine Speciesbestimmung nur nach 
der Farbe der Conidienpolster immer misslich ist \ 
Although ‘ Brown Rot 9 has caused serious damage to the fruit crops 
in our own country for many years, no scientific investigations of the 
outbreaks have, until quite recently, been attempted, and references to the 
diseases have been practically confined to notifications of their occurrence 
and to the recommendation of methods of control adopted abroad. No 
attempt was made to compare the forms occurring here with those 
investigated by Woronin and others on the Continent, and generally it has 
been assumed that all outbreaks of ‘ Brown Rot ’ were caused by Monilia 
fructigena . 3 * 
In 1864 an article appeared in the ‘Gardeners 5 Chronicle ’ over the 
initials M. J. B., describing a serious outbreak of a rot of apricots, the 
disease being caused by ‘ a little greyish mould, Oidium fructigenum 5 ; 
a similar disease of apples and pears was assumed to be caused by the 
same fungus. Worthington G. Smith writes, in 1885, that ‘The fungus 
(referred to Oidium fructigenum ) is often extremely destructive to stored 
Apples when kept in damp or unventilated store rooms ; the same pest 
destroys Pears, Plums, and other fruits. 
‘ The warts are generally grey in colour, varying, however, in tint from 
cream to fawn colour, or different shades of grey.’ It would seem from this 
description of the pustules that both Monilia fructigena and M. cinerea 
had been observed but not recognized as different species. The same 
writer had also noticed that ‘ The fungus has, in some instances, the power 
of changing the skin of the Apple to a jet-black colour \ 
1 Loc. cit. , p. 203. 2 Loc. cit., p. 65. 
3 An article in the Gardeners’ Chronicle of December 30, 1915, refers to M. cinerea and 
M. laxa , but only in relation to work done on the Continent. 
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