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attacked staminate inflorescence, there are a number of fertile blossoms 
the individual ovaries of which reached the size of a walnut, and were 
still crowned with the base of the style. 
On such plants as survived, the appearances of disease diminished 
after 6 weeks, with the ripening of spores in the pustules, and not long 
after only the dried pustules remained; aside from these, and the per¬ 
sistent distortions of the upper part of the axis, nothing more was to be 
seen of the smut. During this time the fertile inflorescences appeared 
below on the axis, in the axils of the leaves which had remained sound. 
No smut was to be seen on these, and later they were pollenized from 
the staminate inflorescences which had remained sound and developed 
normally. In autumn, a large number of ears bearing sound, ripe ker¬ 
nels were harvested from these plants. 
After this conclusion of the series of experiments no doubt could re¬ 
main that the smut germs develop, and within 14 days, too, in the par¬ 
ticular spots of the young parts of the plants into which they have 
penetrated, and in these only. All parts of the plants which are hot 
touched directly by the germs remain sound, so that sound ears can be 
gathered in autumn from maize plants which are infected in the heart 
in summer and which become smutty on all parts that have been 
touched directly. 
But here was still necessary the additional experiment of verification 
by which it must actually be proved that the fertile inflorescences also 
become smutty as soon as they come into direct contact with smut germs 
while still in a very young condition. 
III. Again, the next year I had whole beds of maize plants prepared 
in the field for supplemental infections. I waited for the time when the 
pistillate inflorescences should begin to appear on the sound plants. 
These showed distinctly at the end of July, on the third to fifth inter¬ 
nodes of the axis, by a swelling of the leaf sheath. As soon as the 
swelling had reached the point where the otherwise firmly encompass¬ 
ing ligule was pushed up somewhat from the axis, the infection was 
made by spraying into the leaf sheath so that the injected fluid con¬ 
taining the sprout germs stood even with the rim of the ligule. More 
than one hundred plants, each of which, as a rule, afterward brought 
forth two ears, were infected in this way. 
The results of the infection were visible at the expiration of 14 days. 
The leaf sheaths were burst open, and the ears within came to view as 
a continuous smut pustule. Individual ears swelled to the size of a 
child’s head, and only here and there distinguishable were the peculiar¬ 
ities of the fertile inflorescence, the ovaries of the young ear; other¬ 
wise, for the most part, was to be seen a single deformed, repulsive 
structure. No fertile inflorescence, which was infected when a young 
bud, remained uninjured. The narrowly local action of the infection 
could be shown directly on the plants on which the lowest flower buds 
were infected but not the upper. The latter always remained sound; 
the former alone were destroyed. 
