6gS Howard. — On Diplodia cacaoicola , P. Henn. ; 
left under the trees. Great care should therefore be taken to 
bury all the old pods, and to collect and burn all diseased pods 
noticed on the trees, together with all the dead wood found 
in the plantations. The use of tar after pruning would also 
to a great extent check infection of growing trees. In sugar- 
cane cultivation, if the diseased canes were regularly collected 
and burnt at the reaping season there would be less chance of 
infecting the next crop. The cacao planters in the West 
Indies are now beginning to adopt these measures, with the 
result that the pod-disease described in this paper is much 
rarer on such estates than on others where no precautions are 
taken. 
Systematic Position of the Fungus. 
In the absence of any higher fructification than the pycnidia 
described above, the Fungus must be referred to the Fungi 
Imperfecti, and, on account of the character of the pycnidia 
and the brown two - celled spores, falls into the division 
Sphaerioidaceae-Phaeodidymae of the Sphaeropsidales , which 
includes the genus Diplodia and its allies. Specimens of the 
Fungus were referred to Kew, where it was determined by 
Massee as Diplodia cacaoicola , P. Henn., a form occurring on 
dead cacao branches in the Cameroons 1 . In the classification 
given byLindau in ‘Die natiirlichen Pflanzenfamilien ’ 2 mention 
is made of an allied Fungus, Botryo diplodia Theobromae , Pat., 
as occurring on cacao fruits in Ecuador. Lecomte and Chalot 3 , 
in their book on Cacao, in discussing the South American 
diseases known as Mancha 4 , state that Patouillard found this 
Fungus on diseased cacao-pods from Ecuador, and that 
probably one of the forms of Mancha 5 , in which the rind turns 
brown and the pods dry up, may be due to this Fungus. 
1 Engler’s Jahrb., Bd. xxii, p. 80, 1895. 
3 Engler and Prantl, Die natiirlichen Pflanzenfamilien: Fungi, I. Theil, 1. 
Abteilung, p. 372. 
3 Lecomte and Chalot, Le Cacoyer et sa culture. 
4 Sodiro, Observaciones sobre la enfermedad del Cacao ‘ Mamada,’ See. Quito, 
1892. 
5 De Lagerheim, Pflanzenpathologische Mitteilungen aus Ecuador. 1892. 
