Proparatory to Riisi-ARCH Cariji.r 69 



extended the study of bacteria to plant diseases and tiic study of 

 plant diseases to include bacterial causes. His discovery and his 

 experiments, which withheld the test of subsequent investigation, 

 will be elaborated more fully in Chapter III. 



Burrill was a student of the German and French languages, as 

 well as a botanist w ho early realized the need, especially in the 

 agricultural colleges, for studying vegetable diseases, hi 1880 a 

 short treatise on bacteria by Georg Winter, appearing as one of 

 the parts of D/e Pi/ze of Rabenhorst's Kryptogamenjlora Deutsch- 

 lands (1884), was translated by Burrill and published in 1882 as 

 ^part of a paper entitled simply "The Bacteria."''' Smith re- 

 viewed the "neat," sixty-five page pamphlet the next year in the 

 hWchiPan School Moderator}-'' It contained, he told his readers, 

 " a very satisfactory account of the nature and organization, effects, 

 and classification of these microscopic plants." In this paper on 

 "The Bacteria," Burrill described the organism of pear blight and 

 entitled it Micrococcus amylovorus. 



Smith at this time believed that the bacteria are " cellular 

 organisms of a vegetable nature." His belief was based on 

 Magnin's treatise which considered, among many other points, 

 their structure, the nature of the substances contained in their 

 protoplasm, their forms, multiplication, and " their role in fermen- 

 tations, in putrefactions, in contagious diseases, and in surgical 

 lesions." In his "Index Rerum," Smith devoted several pages to 

 points about bacteria; and one, "The actual state of our knowl- 

 edge of bacteria," was taken directly from Magnin's work as 

 translated in 1880 by Dr. Sternberg. 



Among the pages of Smith's "Index Rerum" appeared no 

 mention of the work of Burrill on pear blight, no reference to the 

 work of Anton de Bary, none to the work of Kiihn or his book 

 on plant diseases, no allusion to culture study of fungi or bacteria, 

 no reference to the early plant disease study of Dr. William 

 Gilson Farlow of the Bussey Institution and cryptogamic labora- 

 tories at Harvard University, and none to Woronin's researches on 

 the life histories of the lower plants, chiefly fungi. Woronin ""^ 

 was a former student of DeBary at the University of Freiburg and 



^■^^llth Ann. Rep't III. Indus. Univ., reprint. 

 "'3 (36): 653, May 31, 1883. 



'""Erwin F. Smith, Woronin, Phytopathology 2 (1): 1-4, 1912, quotation and 

 papers tabulated at p. 2. 



