Chapter VIII 



SMITH CHIHF OF A LABORATORY OF PLANT PATHOLOGY. 

 RFCOGNITION OF PLANT BACTFRIOLOGY IN EUROPF. 



DL'RING the decade 1897-1906 many plant pathologists, ento- 

 mologists, and animal pathologists were appointed at various 

 experiment stations/ One of the strongest centers for the study 

 of plant diseases wns that developed by L. R. Jones at the Uni- 

 versity of Vermont. He was offered a position with the New 

 York Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva but he chose to 

 remain at Vermont where as botanist of the experiment station 

 and professor of botany in the university he had been contributing 

 since 1890 important studies in plant pathology." In 1898 he wrote 

 Smith that he believed his opportunity there " unequalled among 

 our Colleges and Stations." He was to have a " leave of absence 

 for study and investigation " of one-half of every other school 

 year. After considering advanced study at Harvard or in Germany, 

 he accepted Smith's offer to spend his first leave in his laboratory. 

 " Plant pathology and plant physiology are what I am most after," 

 he wrote Smith on April 11, 1898, and he asked for " pure cultures 

 of some of your bacteria, pathogenic to plants especially your 

 Bacillus solanacearum and Pseudomonas campestris, also Bacillus 

 amylovorus if at hand. I should be glad of any others which you 

 can send of European or American origin." During September he 

 and his assistant, William A. Orton, sent Smith plant disease 

 specimens: an " aster trouble " suggesting "* the malformations 

 you figure as accompanying peach rosette and yellows," and 

 " some corn sheaths showing blotches which are, I judge," he said, 

 " the thing which Burrill attributed to Bacillus Serghi. . . . Have 

 you worked over this matter sufficiently so you are satisfied as to 

 the correctness of Burrill's conclusions regarding the bacterial 

 nature of the disease? " 



Dr. Smith's " Record Book of Culture Media " shows that Jones 



^ Fifty years of pathology, op. cit., 28. 



^G. W. Keitt and F. V. Rand, Lewis Ralph Jones 1864-1945, Phytopathology 

 36(1): 3, 4, and bibliography, 11-17, Jan. 1946. 



333 



