Oi- nil Scii-NCi-: of Plant Bacti;riology 281 



the early days of the science. We should now start out in the 

 rii;ht way. " He liked Smith's treatment t)f " physiological charac- 

 ters." The reason why he could not furnish Smith with cultures 

 was that 



everything ... in the way of cultures f liad been] lost last winter. I was 

 movint; about from place to place last year. I-irst in with the A^r[icultura]l 

 Chemistry dep[artmcn]t, then into an old building and finally into my 

 present quarters. I lost my Bacillus aromaticus as well. Russell wrote me 

 a few weeks ago for cultures but I was compelled to make the same state- 

 ment. . . . [N]o one regrets this more than I do. I don't remember just 

 the number of gelatin cultures ... I made a half dozen or so cultures in 

 gelatin but I cannot t;ive you the exact number. I did note this, a slight 

 liquefaction which I attributed to a foreign organism. I worked with 

 neutral or slightly alkaline media. I am inclined to think that many of 

 the species are variable when we come to consider physiological charac- 

 ters. ... I have some additional notes on other gas species which I may 

 send you in the course of a few weeks. . . . Are you making a collection 

 ot fungi of your own ? I shall in the course of a few months distribute a 

 first century of Iowa fungi and shall be glad to send you a set. 



The black rot of crucifers was the third bacterial plant disease 

 which Smith studied. His work on this did not get fully under 

 way until 1897, although his preliminary investigations began 

 soon after reading Pammel's first papers. Halsted of Rutgers 

 College and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station had 

 congratulated him in 1895 on his investigations of his first bac- 

 terial plant disease studied: " It delights me," he wrote, '" to get 

 your paper upon Bacillus tracheiphilus. ... I am glad you have 

 gone to the bottom of the trouble and can show so clearly that 

 the ivilt is caused by a microorganism." When Pammel wrote on 

 Christmas Day, 1896, he had just received Smith's bulletin 12 on 

 Bacillus solanacearum, cause of a bacterial disease of tomato, tgg 

 plant, and Irish potato, and the second such disease studied by 

 Smith. 



American botanical work, except in phanerogamic taxonomy 

 and to some extent in cryptogamic botany, was not fully recognized 

 in many centers of European scholarship. Inferior quality of some 

 American work partly explained this, but not altogether since some 

 very creditable work had been done here. Highly reputable 

 research in plant physiology and pathology still passed practically 

 unnoticed abroad. So valuable a bulletin as Waite's " The Pol- 



