On Plant Patholoc.v and Bacteriology 103 



Spalding believed that "some interesting and valuable" re- 

 search was also being performed at the University of Wisconsin. 

 " Of these," he said, 



may be specially mentioned the spot disease of strawberry leaves, which 

 within a few years has proven hiqhiy destructive to certain varieties of 

 strawberries in common cultivation. The description of the parasite, the 

 indication of varieties most susceptible to the disease and others that are 

 practically exempt, and the directions for checking the difficulty by burning 

 over the beds are the main features of the report for which we have to 

 thank Professor [of Botapy and Horticulture William] Trelcase. 



In the second annual report*^ of the Wisconsin Agricultural 

 Experiment Station had been published with bibliography 

 Trelease's "very full account"'''* of the white rust of strawberry. 

 His report traced the vegetative growth of the fungus Ramiilaria 

 tulasnei within the leaf tissues of the plant, the production of 

 white spots and summer spores or conidia, the distribution by wind 

 or other agencies of the conidia on short branches of the mycelium 

 that project through the stomata of the leaf, and an overwinter- 

 ing stage of the fungus. His undergraduate work in botany and 

 mycology had been taken at Cornell University under A. N. 

 Prentiss and W. R. Dudley; and, under Farlow at Harvard, he 

 had secured his doctorate of science. Since becoming an instructor 

 at the University of Wisconsin, he had been much influenced by 

 the work of Burrill in Illinois. When he "was working as a 

 beginner on the parasitic fungi of Wisconsin, [Burrill], as a 

 master, [w^as working] on those of Illinois."*'' The Illinoisan's 

 discovery that pear blight is caused by a bacterium was in part 

 responsible for Trelease's early interest in bacteriology and for 

 his teaching of plant bacteria in his university courses in botany.^" 

 He, while at Wisconsin, built a valuable herbarium which in- 

 cluded cryptogamic specimens. In 1885, however, he was offered, 

 probably on Dr. Asa Gray's recommendation, the professorship of 



tomato disease, Proc. 5th Meet. Soc. Prom. Agric. Sci., 42, 1884. At p. AA the word 

 " fungicide " is used. This meeting took place at Philadelphia. 



*^Pp. 47-58. 



*^ F. L. Scribner, Fungous diseases of plants, Rep't of the Comm'er of Agric. 

 for 1885: 82. 



"Wm. Trelease, Thomas Jonathan Burrill, Botanical Gazette 62: 153, 1916. 



" Papers on bacteriology and allied subjects, by former students of Harry Luman 

 Russell, University of W^isconsin Studies Science 2: 10, 1921. 



