266 
DISEASES OF MAIZE. 
all the parenchymatous organs of the maize plant, and more or less completely destroys 
them. The stalk, however, and the female and male blossoms, are the parts which it 
most especially affects. The leaves no longer furnish the great parenchymatous masses 
necessary for their development; and usually it seizes merely on their lowest parts, or 
also only on the husk-bearer; but its development here is already imperfect, and it forms 
on the leaf-organs only brand-bladders of the size of a poppy seed to a pea. In all the 
parenchymatous organs, however, it developes itself in the form of masses; and in good 
soil, and in actual cultivation of the maize, I have seen brand-bladders of the size of a 
child’s head. Its development is a peculiar one, as it forces out great masses of cellular 
tissue, formed from the tissue of the mother plant, and similar in formation to the latter. 
Some parts of the organs affected by the brand, swell and become white. The green 
color and compact formation of the outer skin gradually passes into a soft watery tissue of 
a silky lustre, the skin of which allows the large cellular formation to be seen through 
it by the naked eye. If we more closely examine this pathological product, we find that 
it consists of tolerably large tender-walled substance, the cells of which, like that of the 
normal vegetable tissue, contain sap, and possess a large slimy cellular kernel sticking on 
the side. In each of these cells, at a later period, is secreted a slimy granulous substance, 
which is yellowish, and afterwards brownish, in which still later the brand is developed. 
Prof. Meyen examined this brand formation very critically^, and we may here be allowed 
to repeat his investigations : 
At first is seen in the large and juicy cells of the maize plant, or especially in the 
pathological cellular substance, the above mentioned little deposites of slime, which are 
produced on the inner surface of the cellular walls. From these, at first wholly irregu¬ 
larly formed, almost transparent deposites, proceed fibrous, dismembered and branching 
structures, which already exhibit a plant-like form, and which by their later changes 
more clearly evidence the same. These truly parasitic formations are in the beginning 
colorless, almost entirely transparent, and only under a strong magnifying power exhibit 
a fine-grained organised structure in their tender slimy substance; but soon it is observed 
that particular boughs of this little plant are branched out; and in individual cases, yet 
more developed, branches and twigs stand closely crowded together. At the same time 
with this branching, the fibres are already partially separated into small globular bodies, 
sometimes at the base, and sometimes at the point of the fibres ; but for the most part 
their little side branches first separate oil’ themselves. Many fibres are wholly changed 
into little branches in a wreathed form, which still hang together. They are originally 
ellipsoidal, and then become more or less globular; are at first of a yellowish and after¬ 
wards of a brownish color, and at last brown. But they likewise separate themselves from 
the branches producing them, and often before they have reached their normal size, which 
follows after their separation as it were by a sort of after ripening. By and by all the fibres 
fall away into such spores or grains of brand; by and by, too, the cells of the diseased 
vegetable substance are destroyed; and if we carefully cut through lengthwise (Fig, 1, b ) 
the brand-bladders not yet opened or sprung apart (Fig. 1, a), we find that the white 
