Recognition or Plant BACTr.Rioi.oGY in Europi- 36l 



pleasure for his " intcrcstiiii; paper on Wakkcr's hyacinth disease, 

 this day received."' Further recognition came from Europe; Lafar 

 of the bacteriological laboratory of Vienna, Alfred Moller of 

 Ebcrswalde, Germany, Luigi Savastano of the Royal School of 

 Agriculture of Portici near Naples, Italy, and by 1901 practically 

 every world known botanist, bacteriologist, and many eminent 

 medical authorities and hygicnists were among his correspondents. 



Among other letters from foreign scientists during this year, 

 F. A. F. C. Went, another pathologist of the Netherlands, for a 

 while located in Java and later of the University of Utrecht, 

 informed by letter t)f July 21, 1901, that he was at Paramaribo, 

 Dutch Guiana, South America. Under orders of the Netherlands 

 government, he was inquiring into agricultural conditions in the 

 Dutch West hidian Colonies and making " some researches about 

 diseases of Theobiama Cacao and the Sugar-Cane. For this end," 

 he wrote, " I will be staying here till the middle of October, then 

 proceed to Georgetown (Demerara), Barbados and Trinidad, 

 thence to Curasao and the smaller Dutch Antilles." He wanted 

 to learn about the cultivation of sisal hemp in Florida, and on 

 November 22 announced that he would arrive in Washington by 

 way of either Florida or New York from the Bahamas and several 

 of the West Indies island possessions of the Netherlands. 



Early that autumn Smith had received a letter from N. A. Cobb 

 of the department of agriculture at Sydney, New South Wales, 

 concerning the gumming of sugar cane disease. He had promised 

 " at the proper season to secure for [him] some further specimens " 

 of the malady, enclosed a copy of his article on the subject, 

 and added the important information that his recommendations 

 had " resulted in quelling the trouble so completely " that speci- 

 mens were now not easy to secure. Dr. Went had written that 

 the disease was not in Java and that, while in the West Indies, 

 he had visited many sugar producing colonies and spoken with 

 scientific men and not located it. Cobb wrote that he had been 

 " busy on other lines since [his] return " from the United States 

 where he had met Smith at Woods Hole. " The bacteriologist of 

 the Linnean Society of N[ew] S[outh] W[ales]," he believed, 

 was " doing some excellent work with pure cultures of the microbe, 

 but [had] published nothing as yet." Other workers may have 

 begun studies. 



