Florida and California Laboratorihs 213 



ot DcBarv. The \vlu)k' doniaiii ot the physu)U)L;y of bacteria 

 otTer[ed] numerous prolilems of which " as yet little was known. 

 During the dry summer of 1892 a destructive disease of 

 cucumber, melon, and squash appeared near Washington. Pre- 

 occupied with the larger investigations of the California vine 

 disease, orange diseases in Florida, and fruit diseases in New 

 York, the half dozen workers of the Division of Vegetable 

 Pathology had not been able to give immediate close study to 

 each newly reported crop disease. Smith, while going to and from 

 Maryland in peach yellows work, may have discovered the wilt 

 disease of cucurbits. His attention may have been called to it, 

 while studying another malady. In the autumn of 1892, a destruc- 

 tive muskmelon disease, not before known in this country, was 

 found in southwest Michigan. Most of his study of this was done 

 in his Washington laboratory. After he had started his culture 

 examinations, he found early in 1893 a published article on it by 

 Dr. Victor A. Peglion of the Laboratorio di Botanica e Patologia 

 Vegetale of the Royal School of Viticulture and Enology at 

 Avellino, Italy. He had another Italian correspondent. In 1888 

 he had written to Fridiano Cavara of the Laboratorio Crittogamico 

 of the Royal Botanical Institute of the University of Pavia and 

 procured his publications on plant diseases, mostly diseases of 

 grapes. May 18, 1893, Smith told Peglion that, from his reading, 

 the disease he described was identical " with one which did con- 

 siderable damage in parts of the United States last season," and 

 he asked Peglion to send " specimens of the leaves showing spore 

 tufts," so that he might compare. June 28, he wrote again to 

 Peglion 



Your kind letter, together with the specimens and pamphlets, came 

 soon after my second letter to you. I am greatly obliged, and when I have 

 studied your fungus a little more thoroughly I will write you again con- 

 erning it. At the present writing I have a number of plate cultures going 

 and it appears to be identical with the one which I have from this country, 

 but perhaps it is too early to speak positively. 



Smith isolated the fungus, an Alternaria, in pure culture, made 

 many beautiful drawings and obtained " numerous beautiful infec- 

 tions by spraying pure sporulating cultures on the foliage." -^ He 



*' Synopsis of researches, op. cit., 20; Fifty years of pathology, op. cit., 22. 



