WINTER MEETING. 20S 



EXPERIMENT WORK IN DISKiSES OF PLA.NTS. 



C. A. KEFFER, COLUMBIA. 



The Experiment stations of the United States have been established since 

 1887, and the majority of them have been in good working order four or five years ^ 



As is usual with our people, the public began demanding results within a year 

 of the passage of the law establishing the stations, and to supply this premature 

 demand many bulletins of only slight value were issued. But with all the draw- 

 backs that have attended their work, the Experiment stations have furnished a 

 supply of information so varied in character as to touch almost every phase of in- 

 dustry connected with the soil, and so accurate as to make of each careful reader 

 a more thoughtful, observant and successful farmer. 



The specialists in botany and horticulture found many lines of work demand- 

 ing attention when the stations were organized, and their labors have been at- 

 tended with a large measure of success. Probably nothing with which the horti- 

 culturist has had to contend has caused greater loss, or seemed so much beyond his 

 control, as tbe many diseases of fruit and vegetables known under the popular 

 names of rust, rot, scab and blight. At the outset, the stations In several of the 

 states were fortunate in numbering among their workers eminent botanists who 

 had already progressed far in the study of these diseases from a scientific point of 

 view. Such men as Atkinson, Arthur, Halsted, Pammel and Seribner, scientists in 

 the best sense of the word, had been investigating independently and in co-opera- 

 tion with other distinguished botanists, making a complete classification of fungus 

 plants, noting their methods of growth and reproduction, and the plants infested 

 by them, and endeavoring to find preventives or remedies for them. 



The organization of the stations made it possible not only to broaden the 

 scope of the investigations, but to place within reach of the fruit-growers, in lan- 

 guage easily understood, the knowledge already acquired, and to give to researches 

 that had thus far been conducted largely for scientific purposes only, a strong 

 practical bias, making them of direct and immediate use to the horticulturist 



It has seemed to me that I could render the fruit interests of the State no 

 greater service at this meeting than to review the work done by those stations 

 that have led in the study of plant diseases. The reports of the Bureau of Vege- 

 table Pathology at Washington— more comprehensive than any issued by the 

 stations — will not be considered, because they are more easily available. Should 

 it seem desirable, there m ill be printed, as an appendix to this paper, in the annual 

 report, a complete bibliography of all bulletins touching on the subject of plant 

 disease, thus enabling any member to secure a record of any line of experiments^ 

 thus far made. 



For convenience, the diseases of plants may be roughly classified as : 



1. Those which injure the fruit, as grape-rot and apple-scab. 



2. Those which injure stem and foliage, as antbracnose, rust and blight. 

 Investigators have endeavored to determine (1) the full life history of the 



fungus, (2) what injury it causes, (3) remedies or preventives. 



Beginning with class 1, let us first consider what the stations have done in 

 the treatment of the disease of the grape known as black-rot. 



The most valuable, because the most exhaustive, bulletins on the rots of the 

 grape have been issued by the stations of Tennessee ( No. 4, Vol. 4, 1891), Dela- 

 ware ( No. 6, '89, and 10, '90), and Massachusetts (No, 17, '92). 



