On Plant Pathoi.ocv and Bacthriologv 95 



with the hirgcst hbrary and herbarium in America. Before Farlow 

 liad t;onc to Europe, C^iray may have strengthened in liim an 

 interest in plant reproduction among algae and fungi, since he 

 lectured on these subjects in 1872 and perhaps before. DeBary, 

 however, also a doctor of medicine, more than any other scholar 

 probably, helped the young student to apply his knowledge of 

 physiology, anatomy, and pathology to the study of plants and 

 plant diseases; at least, DeBary quickened his zeal for research in 

 the life histories of the lower organisms. W. A. Sctchell, one of 

 .Farlow's biographers, believed that "since DeBary paid much 

 attention to the parasitism and saprophytism of fungi and the 

 reactions of host plants to their parasitic forms, we may readily 

 infer that Farlow received much inspiration for the work he insti- 

 tuted on his return to America on phytopathology." His work at 

 the Bussey Institution became "primarily directed toward the 

 fungi of economic interest . . . [H]e laid there, firmly and effi- 

 ciently, the foundations of what has come to be known as phyto- 

 pathology." ^- 



His accounts of asexual growth from the prothallus of Pteris 

 cretica and Pteris serrulata, published " partly here the year of his 

 return, created notice. During the next decades no scholar of 

 plant evolution among the lower orders was to write on this 

 continent with more authority than he. Moreover, his articles 

 which appeared in the first volumes (1876-1880) of the Bussey 

 Institution's Bulletin won for him instantaneous acclaim and, from 

 the point of viev/ of the plant pathologist, have been regarded as 

 "epoch making"^* since not only were life histories of disease- 

 producing organisms shown but also from his descriptions of how 

 host plants are attacked methods were suggested whereby to 

 eradicate and prevent the causes of disease. In 1875 he published 

 on the potato rot, and immediately Charles H. Peck urged, " We 

 need more such papers. . . . Let me say by all means follow up 

 this line of investigation." 



In 1876 appeared Farlow's article, " On the American grape- 



'- op. cit., 4, 5. 



"Bo/. Zeit. 32: 181; Quar. Jour. Micr. Sci. 2 (14): 266; Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts 

 and Sci. 9: 68. 



^* Beverly T. Galloway, Progress in the treatment of plant diseases in the United 

 States, Yearbook of the U. S. Depl. Agric. for 1899: 191-200, at p. 193. 



