[Illustration: FIG. 34.--Section across an old pine stem in the cancerous region injured by Peridermium Pini (var. corticola). As shown by the figures, the stem was fifteen years old when the ravages of the fungus began to affect the cambium near a. The mycelium, spreading in the cortex and cambium on all sides, gradually restricted the action of the latter more and more; at thirty years old, the still sound cambium only extended half way round the stem--no wood being developed on the opposite side. By the time the tree was eighty years old, only the small area of cambium indicated by the thin line marked 80 was still alive; and soon afterward the stem was completely "ringed," and dead, all the tissues being suffused with resin. (After Hartig.)] Putting everything together, it is not difficult to explain the symptoms of the disease. The struggle between the mycelium on the one hand, which tries to extend all round in the cortex, and the tree itself, on the other, as it tries to repair the mischief, will end in the triumph of the fungus as soon as its ravages extend so far as to cut off the water supply to the parts above: this will occur as soon as the mycelium extends all round the cortex, or even sooner if the effusion of turpentine hastens the blocking up of the channels. This may take many years to accomplish. So far, and taking into account the enormous spread of this disastrous disease, the obvious remedial measures seem to be, to cut down the diseased trees--of course this should be done in the winter, or at least before the spores come--and use the timber as best may be; but we must first see whether such a suggestion needs modifying, after learning more about the fungus and its habits. It appears clear, at any rate, however, that every diseased tree removed means a source of Æcidiospores the less. Probably every one knows the common groundsel, which abounds all over Britain and the Continent, and no doubt many of my readers are acquainted with other species of the same genus (_Senecio_) to which the groundsel belongs, and especially with the ragwort (_Senecio Jacobæa_). It has long been known that the leaves of these plants, and of several allied species, are attacked by a fungus, the mycelium of which spreads in the leaf passages, and gives rise to powdery masses of orange yellow spores, arranged in vertical rows beneath the stomata: these powdery masses of spores burst forth through the epidermis, but are not clothed by any covering, such as the _Æcidia_ of _Peridermium Pini_, for instance. These groups of yellow spores burst forth in irregular powdery patches, scattered over the under sides of the leaves in July and August: toward the end of the summer a slightly different form of spore, but similarly arranged, springs from the same mycelium on the same patches. From the differences in their form, time of appearance, and (as we shall see)