Went. — Notes on Sugar-cane Diseases. 595 
this would be the more probable if they really are identical 
with Thielaviopsis , because this fungus spreads so very easily 
that almost any cane sent from Java, however sound it is or 
attacked by whatever disease, will contain this fungus. No 
other experiments are given by Massee in support of the 
view that these fungi are forms of the same species ; for 
the experiment in which a small portion of diseased cane 
containing hyphae of the Melanconium- stage was introduced 
into a slit made in a healthy cane where afterwards macro- 
conidia were produced, cannot prove anything, as of course 
it cannot be known what other organisms had been introduced 
with the diseased cane. 
IV. Experiments with Melanconium-Stylospores. 
I thought it necessary to try some experiments with Melan - 
ctf/zzz/w-stylospores. I may premise that Melanconium Sacchari 
(probably identical with what Cobb 1 calls Strumella Sacchari) 
is called in the West Indies ‘rind-fungus.’ According to 
a great many different publications by Barber, Bovell, Hart, 
Fawcett, &c. 2 , and to the already mentioned paper of 
Massee, a serious disease of the cane is attributed to it. This 
same disease has been described by Cobb in Queensland ; 
whereas Boname 3 states that Melanconium Sacchari in 
Mauritius attacks only dead canes. Now here in Java also 
I have found a Melanconium on the sugar-cane, which so 
much resembles the fungus from the West Indies that one 
might be inclined to consider them both as the same species. 
But the Melanconium in Java is only to be found on dead 
canes ; it is only a saprophyte, and not a wound-parasite, as 
the form in the West Indies seems to be. Experiments, 
which I will describe hereafter, have brought me to this 
conviction. It may be possible that the Melanconium from 
1 Cobb, 1. c., p. 23. 
2 Barbados, Report of Dodds Reformatory, 1892, 1893; Supplement to the 
Leeward Islands Gazette, 1893, xxiv ; Bulletin, Botanical Department, Jamaica, 
1894, 1895 ; Royal Botanic Gardens, Trinidad, Bulletin, 1894, 1895. 
3 Colony of Mauritius, Rapport de la Station Agronomique, 1894. 
