On Plant Pathology and Bactlriology 113 



were called fi)r: lirst, in nomciKlaturc and classification t)f culti- 

 vated and other farm plants of value, similar in scope to Real's 

 efforts to systematize the apples on the basis of their floral char- 

 acters and Sturtevant's enumeration and description of species of 

 Indian corn included in which were important beginning studies 

 of the origin and history of various cultivated vegetables; and 

 second and third, full-scale investigation in vegetable physiology 

 and pathology. "The vegetable pathologist," said Bessey, "must 

 build his science upon that of his fellow worker in vegetable 

 physiology, and the results of the labor of both must be laid 

 before modern agriculture for its use. That botany which hopes 

 to satisfy the demands of the advanced agriculture of today must 

 include a knowledge of pathology." 



In September 1S84, following the annual convention of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science, an official 

 committee had been appointed composed of Arthur, Bessey, Far- 

 low, Burrill, Beal, Peck, and Joseph Trimble Rothrock to secure 

 research and a nation-wide program within the United States 

 Department of Agriculture to study and treat diseases of plants.**^ 

 The maintenance of a sound national economy was being en- 

 dangered by the increasing menace of diseases among agricultural 

 crops. Agriculture was still the nation's basic industry, and im- 

 mediate action was believed required because of the alarming 

 prevalence and severity of some diseases. The leaders of this 

 movement were Arthur and Bessey, but other members of the 

 committee were in full sympathy with the proposals of a formal 

 memorial presented from the Association to Commissioner of 

 Agriculture Norman J. Colman in the spring of 1885. By that 

 time Charles V. Riley had been added to the committee. 



Rothrock, like Farlow, had been a student of Gray and DeBary. 

 He had returned from Europe imbued with the new methods of 

 botanical investigation and, appointed to a chair of botany at the 

 University of Pennsylvania, developed one of America's first im- 

 portant botanical laboratories.^^ He in his classroom instruction 

 and laboratory work, while not neglecting adequate fundamental 

 study in taxonomy, put forward research in plant physiology and 



*' J. C. Arthur, History and scope of plant pathology, op. cit., 158-159. 

 ** See, Botany in the University of Pennsylvania, Botanical Gazette 14 (1): 1-5, 

 1889. 



