VOLUME 6, 
No. 1. 
| JOURNAL OF MYCOLOGY 
ISSUED 
May 14, 1890. 
EDITED BY 
THE CHIEF AND HIS ASSISTANTS. 
CHIEF, 
B. T. GALLOWAY. 
Effie A. Southworth. 
ASSISTANTS, 
David G. Fairchild. 
Erwin F. Smith. 
RECENT INVESTIGATIONS OF SMUT FUNGI AND SMUT DISEASES. 
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE SOCIETY OF AGRICULTURISTS OF BERLIN , 
FEBRUARY 17, 1888. 
By Dr. Oskar Brefeld, 
Full Professor of Botany in Munster i. W. 
[Translated from Nachrichten aus dem Klub der Landwirthe zu Berlin, Nos. 220-222, by 
Erwin F. Smith.] 
Gentlemen: About four years ago, in January, 1884,1 found op¬ 
portunity in this place to report the new researches which I had com¬ 
pleted upon the smut fungi, the Ustilaginece. To this first communica¬ 
tion I will to-day add a continuation explaining the results which I 
have obtained since my last address. 
In nature the smut fungi live as parasites, in a multitude of forms. 
We find them universally distributed on the most dissimilar plants, 
but most frequently upon our cultivated plants and among these, es¬ 
pecially, upon the different cereals. The usually striking and ruinous 
destructions which they produce in the host plants, and especially in 
the fruit-bearing portion, the spikes and panicles of grain, have been 
known and feared by farmers for a long time, under the name of smut 
diseases, or the phenomena of grain smut. The grain smuts belong 
without doubt to those plant diseases which operate most destructively, 
iu that they destroy the chief aim of cultivation, the grain itself. For 
this reason first of all they have a very just claim to the most exact 
research for their recognition and prevention. 
As a matter of fact, researches on the smut fungi and observations 
and experiments on the appearance and prevention of smut diseases 
have been made repeatedly for a long time and have often claimed 
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