612 Thiselton-Dyer.—Note on the Sugar-cane 
Disease.’ It is to be noticed that this is not, as might be 
supposed, a disease of pine-apples, but a disease of the sugar¬ 
cane accompanied by a pine-apple odour. He has overlooked 
the fact that Massee had already called attention to its 
probable identity with Trichosphaeria (Kew Bulletin, 1894, 
p. 84). Prillieux and Delacroix had done this the following 
year (1. c., p. 82). 
Massee obtained macro- and microconidia in a flask- 
culture inoculated with stylospores. Went suggests: ‘The 
most probable explanation of this would have been that these 
macro- and microconidia were an impurity having by chance 
entered into the flask ’ ( 1 . c., 594). This seems a purely hypo¬ 
thetical supposition. The experiment has been frequently 
repeated at Kew with the same result. On the other hand, 
Went in Java and Howard in Barbados have failed to obtain 
macro- and microconidia from flask-cultures of stylospores. 
This, however, does not prove more than that tropical con¬ 
ditions may be unfavourable to their production by this 
method. Howard, on the other hand, obtained them without 
difficulty when he inoculated the interior of healthy canes 
with stylospores, and Prillieux and Delacroix appear to have 
been equally successful (1. c., p. 81). 
It is to be observed that while the stylospores are pro¬ 
duced on the external surface of the cane, the macroconidia 
are only produced in the interior. It is not easy to see how 
a flask-culture of the former could be accidentally infected 
with the latter, as suggested by Went. 
In any case there can be little doubt that the macro- and 
microconidia met with in Barbados are actually identical 
with Thielaviopsis (Went, l.c., p. 593). And as Went sought 
for ‘other organs of reproduction’ (p. 591), it may be inferred 
that he regarded this only as a form-genus. A comparison 
of the figure in Kruger’s ‘ Das Zuckerrohr,’ p. 415, of 
the effect of Thielaviopsis on the interior of a sugar-cane with 
that given by Massee (Ann. of Bot., VII, t. 28, f. 6), showing 
the growth of the macroconidia of Trichosphaeria , will leave 
little doubt as to their identity. 
