Prmfakaiorv to Ri:si:Aiu:n Caiu:I'R 67 



but these. althoui;h capable of yicklinq qood results, arc troublesome and 

 have never appealed very stroni;ly to the mass of workers. 



Before 1880 the available literature had been mostly works on 

 the classification and description of fungi, with some few books 

 of merit on plant diseases. " In the time of which I speak," con- 

 tinued Smith, 



there were already many excellent helps in the way of treatises on fungi. 

 We had, for instance, the splendid volumes of tlie " Selecta Fungorum 

 Carpologia " by the brothers lulasne, and if we were not always sure of 

 the Latin construction, we could at least read the magnificent copper plates 

 ^which embellish these volumes. There were also books by Persoon, Corda, 

 the Nees von Esenbecks, de Notaris, Rabenhorst, de Schweinitz, Fuckel, 

 Bonorden and Montagne. There were numerous volumes by the Swedish 

 mycologist Frieze. We had also Berkeley's "" Outlines," Cooke's " Hand- 

 book of British Fungi," and many scattered descriptions by Oudemans, 

 Magnus, Schroeter, Winter, Berkeley, Cooke, Ellis, de Thuemen, Rehm 

 and others, in Hedwigia and other journals. The Italian Saccardo had not 

 yet begun his monumental compilation of all known species of fungi, but 

 he was printing the first parts of his " Fungi Italici." Several parts of 

 Brefeld's "" Untersuchungen " also appeared prior to 1880, and there was 

 an excellent " Handbuch " of cryptogamic plants by Luerssen. There were 

 also some good exsiccati, including, in this country, the first centuries by 

 Ellis. . . . 



In the matter of plant diseases, we were much less well provided. In 

 fact, there was scarcely anything in English in the nature of a general 

 treatise. The nearest approach I can recall was a brief chapter on diseases 

 caused by fungi in Berkeley's "Outlines of British Fungology " (I860), 

 and a little book by M. C. Cooke entitled " Rust, Smut, Mildew and 

 Mould" (1865). A knowledge of foreign languages was even more 

 essential in that day than it is now for the study of diseases of plants. 

 Even in European tongues there were comparatively few useful general 

 works on diseases of plants. We had, it is true, the rare, largely neglected, 

 and generally negligible, crude, early works of Re, Unger, Meyen, Hamel 

 and Hallier. There was also the first edition of Soraucr's " Pflanzenkrank- 

 heiten " (1874), and Winter's little book of a dozen chapters, which 

 appeared in 1878. This book, which described some of the commonest 

 diseases of plants, is now quaint and old-fashioned reading, but it then 

 seemed a model in its way. In 1878 there also appeared a little book by 

 de Jubainville and Vcsque on " Les Maladies des plantes cultivees, des 

 arbres fruitiers et forestiers, produites par le sol, — I'atmosphere, — les para- 

 sites vegetaux, etc., d'apres les travaux de Tulasne, de Bary, Berkeley, 

 Hartig, Sorauer, etc." There was also an earlier and very good book for 

 its time by Kuhn (1858). 



As to bacterial diseases of plants, Smith believed that the litera- 



