136 Pathologist U. S. Department of Agriculture 



publish his Sylloge Fungorum, " destined," Smith said, "' to be a 

 summary of everything known about fungi," and in 1887 A. 

 Engler and K. Prantl "commenced their vast publication 'Die 

 Natiirlichen Pflanzenfamilien,' of service to everyone"^ and one 

 of the first great monumental works which sought, as the title 

 implied, to organize all of the families of plants into natural 

 sequences and orders. 



While at the University of Michigan, Smith may have read with 

 Professor Spalding the Austrian von Thiimen's " little book on the 

 control (Bekampfung) of fungous diseases of cultivated plants," 

 Die bekampfung der Piizkrankhehen unserer Culturgewachse, 

 published in 1886 at Vienna. It is, of course, also possible that 

 during the summer at Lansing, Smith read this book, which 

 Gardeners' Chronicle in England complimented as a bold attempt 

 to summarize the modest results thus far achieved in plant thera- 

 peutics. More likely, hov/ever, neither he nor Spalding studied 

 this book until, at least, the last months of 1886 or the early part 

 of 1887. Probably, furthermore, this book became available in 

 America about the time " the first and second volumes of the 

 greatly improved second edition " of Sorauer's Pjianzenkrankheiten 

 appeared, and which Smith praised as 



a godsend to all of us who could read German. We had at this time in 

 English very few serviceable books. There were not many papers written 

 on plant diseases at that time, nor had we any journals. ... In English 

 there were few books of any sort, good or bad. I recall Berkeley's " Out- 

 lines," with a chapter on plant diseases which was good but old (1869) 

 and very incomplete, and Worthington G. Smith's " Diseases of Field and 

 Garden Crops," newer (1884) and more extensive but less dependable. 

 There was also a little book on " Rusts, Smuts, Mildews, and Moulds," by 

 M. C. Cooke (1865), which did service of a sort in default of something 

 really good. I used also a little German book by Georg "Winter (1878). 

 We had to be content with books and papers in Latin, French, and German, 

 and largely with systematic treatises on fungi. So we read Berkeley and 

 Tulasne, Corda and Fries, Montagne and DeBary, and all the older 

 writers. . . .* 



After 1887 English and American plant pathology became 

 " more than a sublimated mycology." 



Spalding referred to von Thiimen's book " as an illustration of 



» Fifty years of pathology, op. cit., 19, 21, 23, 24, 26. 

 Udem, 20. 



