Of THi; ScuNCi: oi Plant Bactf.riology 30*) 



tigation of the new peach disease if it is to be prevented from becoinin.i^ 

 more rapidly destructive than yellows ever has been in that region. One 

 large orchard . . . between Douglas and I'ennville has already gone and 

 several others in the vicinity are almost annihilated while orchards nearer 

 the village and farther west show from a half dozen to a hundred cases 

 each and some cases of yellows. It is reported to have been found asso- 

 ciated with crown galls in some cases but 1 did not find any such. 



More than this, in October, arrived a request from Halsted of 

 the New Jersey experiment station for Smith to visit " several 

 badly affected orchards " of a leading peach grower in Sussex 

 County to decide \vhether a disease, bearing the characteristic 

 attributes of yellows but believed not contagious, was in fact 

 yellows. Smith pronounced this genuine peach yellows, and when 

 Halsted thanked him he appended: 



It is with pleasure that I find that my little contribution of diseased beans 

 {Bacterium phaseoli?'] serves to add another locality to your list of places 

 where the bacteriosis is known to exist. The black rot of cabbage is com- 

 plained of by some growers in New Jersey, and I will, as I go about during 

 the next six weeks from one end of the State to the other, make inquiries 

 regarding this trouble and gladly communicate any information that may 

 be" obtained upon it. Please accept my many thanks for the paper upon 

 the subject. . . . 



Not until August and September of the next year was Smith 

 able to follow up his field investigations of the " little peach " 

 disease of Michigan. His duties as an expert diagnostician and 

 pathologist of plant diseases exacted much time in his laboratory 

 since specimens of many various maladies were being received 

 from different quarters of the nation. On August 4, the Ento- 

 mological Division of the Department sent him a few cotton bolls 

 received from Texas, a disease of which was ascribed to " insects, 

 bug or weevil " and " doing the cotton great damage." Two days 

 later Entomologist Leland O. Howard forwarded more specimens, 

 this time green cotton bolls showing the same disease, but from 

 Alabama. Examinations indicated a bacterial infection but since 

 at the time Smith " was too crowded with other work to make 

 cultures," his study of the bacteriosis of cotton and the insect 

 believed involved did not get under way for several days, and 

 then turned out to be a failure. Not until May 23, 1898, did he 

 make a second attempt to infect cotton bolls, and this time he 

 used " Sea Island cotton from James Island, South Carolina." 



