HISTORY IN BRIEF. 17 



furnished the material to Doctor Cavara, was good enough to collect 

 similar material for the senior writer in the summer of 1906, but 

 unfortunatel}'^ poured plates were not made therefrom, and we can 

 not come to any definite conclusion from the appearance of the speci- 

 mens. In any event, the dendritic, spore-bearing, liquefying organism 

 which Doctor Cavara isolated and described from these tumors under 

 the name of Clostridium Persicae tuherculosis is quite distinct from 

 the one causing the crown-gall of the peach in this country, and 

 therefore need not be taken into consideration here. 



In 1898 Cavara (Bull. d. Soc. Bot. Ital., p. 241) also described a 

 tumor from juniper, which he attributed to bacteria. Two species 

 were isolated, a micrococcus liquefying gelatin slowly, and a rod 

 which grew as a white mass and rapidly liquefied gelatin. In this 

 case he made inoculations, but not on the same species of juniper, 

 and did not obtain any positive results with either organism. In 

 1904 Baccarini (Nuovo Giornale Bot. It., p. 49) and in 1910 Severini 

 (Annali di Botanica, p. 253) claimed this tumor to be due to a 

 Ceratostoma. 



In 1903 Doctor Scalia, in Sicily, described a tumor occurring on 

 old stems of the rose near the surface of the earth, but also frequently 

 higher up. His paper deals principally with signs of the disease and 

 the anatomy of the healthy and diseased parts. He does not appear 

 to have made any cultures or inoculations, but on the strength of his 

 microscopic examinations he named the organism Bacillus rosarum. 

 He states that he discovered it in very thin sections in the interior 

 cells of the h3^pertrophied tissue and in the brown gum. The bac- 

 teria were numerous in the form of small rods with rounded extrem- 

 ities, measuring 1 to 1.5 // by 0.2 to 0.3 ji. They were stained with 

 methyl violet by putting thin sections into a drop of water (which 

 may have been sterile, although he does not say so or mention any 

 checks), removing the sections after a short time, allowing the drop 

 to dry, and then fixing and staining what remained upon the glass. 

 The diameter of this organism conforms to Cuboni's measurements 

 and is less than that of Bacterium tumefaciens. 



It is impossible to be quite certain that the disease described hy 

 Scalia is identical with the c^o\^^l-gall of the rose as it occurs in this 

 country, and, of course, without proofs from inoculations or an}^ 

 description of the cultures, a name such as he has given is worthless 

 for scientific purposes and should be regarded as a nomen nudum. 

 Owing to the soft nature of the rose gall and the ease with which it 

 disintegrates one might expect to fuid almost any saprophyte in the 

 brown gum. 



Von Thiimen in Austria attributed the tuberculosis of the grape 

 to a fimgus, Fusisporiuni, but without offering any convincing 

 78026°— Bull. 213—11 2 



