Chaptfr III 



LARLV WORK ON PLANT PATHOLOGY AND HACTLRIOLOGY IN 



NORTH AMLRICA. STUDY UNDLR PROl-LSSOR SPALDING AT 



TIIL UNIVI-RSITY OF MICHIGAN 



IN 18^8 tlic American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science had been organized, and by the 1880's was the oldest 

 general, national scientific society on the North American conti- 

 nent. The Association of American Geologists and Naturalists 

 in 1842 had effected a national organization from several at- 

 tempts at forming societies devoted to various branches of science. 

 Academies of science had flourished for many years in the larger 

 cities, notably New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and St. Louis. 

 But, during the middle years of the century, even before the 

 National Academy of Sciences was organized at Washington, the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science had become 

 the federated national unit, created to serve the interests of the 

 two major divisions, natural philosophy or the physical sciences, 

 and natural history, the biological sciences as then known. ^ Under 

 its mantle, numerous other scientific societies would become 

 associated and affiliated, and the Association itself would be 

 organized in sections. Not until 1892 would the science of botany 

 have its own section G, although while yet it was combined with 

 zoolog)^ under section F botanists of North America established a 

 botanical club. Dr. Beal, presiding at the Minneapolis meeting 

 in 1883 of the Association's section of biology, made the theme 

 of his presidential address the relation of agriculture to science, 

 and Dr. E. Lewis Sturtevant spoke on "Agricultural Botany." 

 The American Pomological Society, organized in 1848, was the 

 most influential organization in the American fields of agriculture 

 and horticulture. Its members had been principally responsible 

 for organizing in 1880 the Society for the Promotion of Agricul- 

 tural Science. The American Medical Association had been 

 organized two years before the Pomological Society, at New York 

 City in May 1846. Its membership including delegates from the 



"■ Science, 463, 478, Nov. 14, 1947. 



89 



