Recognition of Plant BArTFRioiOGY in Europi- 373 



which I was then intcrcstcii aiul knew Iroui inirc (.ulturc inoculations to be 

 due to bacteria. . . . Marlier than any positive work in the United States 

 Department of A^ricuhurc, Cavara in Italy studied the disease as it occurs 

 on grapes, isolated a white organism and with it produced a few tumors, 

 but of this I knew nothini^ until I began gathering together the literature 

 references for 



Bulletin 213 of the Bureau of Plant Industry which recorded the 

 history of the early work on crown gall of plants. 



Crown gall research seems to have been recognized by authori- 

 ties of the Division of Vegetable Physiology and Pathology as 

 principally the work of J. W. Tourney, biologist of the Arizona 

 Agricultural Experiment Station. He, in 1900, had published his 

 bulletin 33,''* "An Inquiry into the Cause and Nature of Crown- 

 Gall," which tabulated accounts of other studies made of the 

 disease and presented the results of his own work. At the conclu- 

 sion of his inquiry, he compared his results with those of some 

 recent investigations made of Plasmodiophora brassicae. Among 

 these were the recent studies by Dr. S. Nawaschin (1899). 



During 1897-1898 Tourney had been director of the Arizona 

 station and from 1898 to 1900 superintendent of tree planting in 

 the Division of Forestry of the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture. By 1900, however, when the Yale Forest School was 

 founded, he was chosen to be an assistant professor of forestry 

 and for the remainder of his distinguished career as an American 

 scientist he was at this school, becoming in 1909 professor of silvi- 

 culture and in 1910 its dean and director. 



Since 1892 he and Smith had had some correspondence on plant 

 diseases; and in 1900 they evidently exchanged letters concerning 

 a microscope to be used by Toumey presumably for some research 

 on the physical properties of timber. On November 13, 1899, 

 Toumey had written Woods: 



You remember when I was in Washington I had one or two talks with 

 you regarding the crown gall of the peach and allied trees. Since my return 

 to Tucson I have been giving my entire time to the further investigation 



Organism," May 13, 1908, Bur. PI. Ind., U. S. D. A. This study was based on 

 materials from California and Italy. Bacillus oleae tuberculosis was described and 

 previous work in Europe and the U. S. considered. Also, E. F. Smith, Some observa- 

 tions on the biology of the olive tubercle organism, Centralb. f. Bakt., II, 15: 198- 

 200, 1905. 



Publ. Univ. Ariz. Agric. Sta., April 13, 1900, pp. 9, 39, 63. 



13 



68 



