IKJ JOURNAL OF THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES VOL. 11, NO. 5 



season, and possibly longer. It would be entirely feasible to eliminate com- 

 pletely hay fever from the United States, but the rational carrying out of a 

 program toward this end is being seriously jeopardized by the manufacture 

 and sale of various hastily made and ill-selected pollen preparations which 

 are doing a great deal of harm by shaking the confidence of physicians and 

 the public; such nostrums are advertised even in reputable scientific maga- 

 zines. It is greatly to be desired that reputable and reliable drug manu- 

 facturing firms should take up the problem seriously in cooperation with 

 botanists of standing, so that dependable preparations may be made avail- 

 able to physicians. 



152d meeting 



The 152d meeting of the Academy, the 23d annual meeting, was held at 

 the Administration Building of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, on 

 Tuesday, January 11, 1921. The meeting was called to order by Vice-Presi- 

 dent F. V. CoviLLE. Dr. J. R. Johnston, Chief of the Office of Plant Sani- 

 tation, Cuba, and Director of Research for the United Fruit Company, de- 

 livered an address on Some problems in economic biology in tropical America. 



The activities of the Office of Plant Sanitation, Cuba, begun in 1916, were 

 discussed briefly as including plant quarantine, disease and insect control 

 work, and port, railway, and nursery inspection. The investigational work 

 is carried out at the Estacion Experimental, Santiago de las Vegas. Instruc- 

 tion is given in a recently instituted course of plant pathology in the Uni- 

 versity of Havana. The presence of a considerable force of field inspectors 

 throughout the island gives excellent opportunities for discovering new pests 

 and diseases, new facts about them, and new investigational data regarding 

 the old ones. 



Special attention is being given to coconut budrot, control of the citrus 

 black fly, and to investigation and control of the sugar cane mosaic disease. 



The several types of budrot and their bacterial and fungoid origin were 

 discussed at length. Although progress is being made in combating disease, 

 losses caused by it in the American tropics as a whole are enormous. At the 

 present time spraying, cutting down and burning infected trees, and replant- 

 ing are the most practical methods of control. Progress might conceivably 

 be made by introduction of the disease-resistant varieties, a course which is 

 being undertaken in Panama. 



The coconut suffers also from the "red ring" disease, characterized by a 

 dark red ring seen in the trunk in cross-section. The discolored tissues are 

 found to be full of nematodes. This disease, first described from Trinidad 

 and Grenada, is known also from Cuba and Central America, and is apparently 

 widespread. It is especially destructive in Trinidad, but neither here nor 

 elsewhere has any satisfactory method of control been worked out. Planta- 

 tions on hilly regions are apparently free from this disease, which is found in 

 its most acute form in drained lowlands. 



Hardly second in destructiveness to any other known plant disease is the 

 so-called "banana wilt," caused by Fusarium cubense. This is widespread 

 in tropical America and occurs in many regions of the Old World also. Sani- 

 tary measures have almost no appreciable effect, and the disease has pro- 

 gressed rapidly and caused enormous losses. Certain varieties of bananas 

 are highly resistant. The propagation of these seems to offer the most likely 

 solution. 



The mosaic disease of sugar cane and the control of the citrus black fly 

 were discussed, the difficulties of the latter work being especially emphasized. 



