87 
SMUT-FUNGI. 
RECENT DISCOVERIES AS TO THE NATURE AND ACTION OF USTILAGI- 
NE^!.* 
It is hardly too much to say that the man who clears up the life 
history of smut-fungi and gives to the world an intelligible account 
on which a successful treatment can be based, realizes tlie proud 
achievement of making two blades of grass grow where only one grew 
before—a feat worthy of the most devoted consideration of citizens and 
statesmen, as we have been told on high authority. Perhaps the honor 
is already due to those botanists—Kuhn, B. Wolff, De Bary, and Bre- 
feld—who, following on the earlier and chiefly anatomical investiga¬ 
tions of Fries, Persoon, Corda, Meyen, Leveille, Bonorden, and espe¬ 
cially the Tulasnes, gradually demonstra ted the biological nature of the 
Ustilaginew , those subtle fungi which cause the smuts of cereals and 
onions, etc., the bunt of wheat, and a large number of similar diseases 
on all kinds of valuable plants. 
* * * * # * * 
For many years previous to about 1840 little was known of these 
fungi beyond the fact that the bunted or smutted grains of corn were 
transformed into a dark, powdery mass of minute spores. Somewhat 
later (I believe first by Bonorden, in 1851) it was found that although, 
when ripe, there is nothing but spores in the blackened grain of corn, 
etc., in a somewhat younger condition these spores can be shown to 
arise from delicate fungous filaments, just as in the case of other fuugi. 
At any rate, this was known to De Bary in 1853, from his own re¬ 
searches on the smuts of maize and other plants, and is now thoroughly 
established. But although it is now very easy to show the fungous fila¬ 
ments, or mycelium, in the case of some TJstilaginece , they are in others 
so delicate and so transparent that the most refined methods and prac¬ 
tice are necessary to demonstrate their presence. Nevertheless, the 
dark spores in all cases arise in tufts from the ends of more or less fine 
filaments. In some cases these filaments have distinct walls and septa, 
and send suckers (haustoria) into the cells of the tissues; in others they 
are so minute that it is extremely difficult to say whether they consist 
of anything more than strands of protoplasm. In some species they 
are abundant, in others sparse. In many species these fungous filaments 
can be traced for considerable distances from the diseased spots; in 
others they are confined to local centers. These characters, as well as 
other peculiarities respecting the branching, mode of spore formation, 
gelatinization of the wads, etc., need not occupy us here however, 
though they are of importance to the mycologist. 
******* 
* II. Marts lull Ward in Gardener's Chronicle, Vol. V, p. 233. 
