New YorRK AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 117 
‘irregular sclerotia are found attached to the subterranean por- 
tion of the stem and occasionally to the roots. 
That Rhizoctonia is the cause of this carnation stem-rot has 
been proven conclusively by inoculation experiments with pure 
cultures repeated many times. Plate IX is from a photograph of 
a carnation plant killed by artificial inoculation with a pure 
culture of Rhizoctonia. It presents the symptoms typical of the 
Rhizoctonia stem-rot disease. 
This stem-rot! is one of the most troublesome of the carnation 
diseases and probably occurs throughout the whole United 
States wherever the carnation is grown. Frequently entire 
houses of mature plants are destroyed by it. During the past 
autumn it appears to have been unusually prevalent. It: at- 
tacks plants of all ages both in the field and in the greenhouse, 
and is one of the principal causes of the damping off of carna- 
tion cuttings. In greenhouse benches it spreads slowly through 
the soil from one plant to another; but according to our experi- 
ments never through the air, as from one bench to another. Its 
principal mode of dissemination is by means of affected plants 
and cuttings. 
ON THE SWEET WILLIAM. 
(Dianthus barbatus.) 
Since Rhizoctonia is an active parasite on the carnation, it is 
to be.expected that it attacks the closely related Dianthus bar- 
batus, and such appears to be actually the case. 
November 5, 1900, we had the privilege of examining a badly 
diseased plat of about 1,600 plants of Dianthus barbatus at 
Queens, Long Island. In the course of the season about 90 per 
ct. of these plants had died from a sort of stem-rot. Several 
of the dead plants were not completely dry at the time of our 
visit, so it was possible to get some idea of the nature of the 
disease and its cause. The symptoms were strikingly like those 
*There is a somewhat similar and destructive Fusarium stem-rot of car- 
nations. See Sturgis, W. C., Twenty-first Ann. Rep. Conn. Agr. Exp. Sta. 
(1897), 175-181; Prillieux et Delacroix, Compt. Rend. de l’Acad. Science, 
129: 744-745; and Stewart, F. C., Bot. Gaz., 72: 129-130, 
