386 Chief of a Laboratory of Plant Pathology 



recently had been president of the Botanical Society of America 

 and the subject of his address as retiring president was on " Prob- 

 lems in the Study of Plant Rusts." Farlow, at the St. Louis 

 meeting, was elected president of the American Association. He, 

 therefore, could not accept the presidency of the newly organized 

 American Mycological Society. Dr. Thaxter became president. 

 Dr. Earle vice-president, and Dr. Clements secretary-treasurer.^^ 

 This year Dr. Thaxter had resigned as president of the Society 

 for Plant Morphology and Physiology, and his " presidential 

 mantle," so he wrote Smith on July 22, 1903, had fallen to Conway 

 MacMillan. Mycologists and plant pathologists were now to have 

 separate organizations, although many were to be members of 

 both the mycological society and the American Phytopathological 

 Society when at the Baltimore meeting of the American Associa- 

 tion (Dec, 1908-Jan., 1909) the Phytopathological Society was 

 organized on a preliminary basis and held its first annual meeting 

 at Boston the following December.^" 



Until 1904 not many papers concerned with study of bacterial 

 diseases of plants had been presented before the American Society 

 of Bacteriologists. At its third annual meeting, held at the Uni- 

 versity of Chicago in 1901,^^ and over which Dr. Welch presided, 

 every paper had either a medical or milk or water bacteriological 

 significance, or some other special phase of research in bacteria 

 other than plant diseases. 



Before the sixth annual meeting of the Society of American 

 Bacteriologists, held at Philadelphia December 27-28, 1904, Smith 

 presented papers: one, "The Effect of Freezing on Bacteria,"®" 

 the results of more than one hundred experiments using about a 

 dozen different bacteria — saprophytes and plant and animal patho- 

 genic forms. These experiments tended to confirm and extend the 

 researches of Prudden, Park, Sedgwick, and Winslow, and were 

 performed with Deane B. Swingle. Six conclusions were set forth 

 with the added deduction that " Probably an enormous number of 



*"• The American Mycological Society, Jour. Mycology 10(69): 46-47, Jan. 1904. 



"" C. L. Shear, First decade of the American Phytopathological Society, Phyto- 

 pathology 9(4): 165 ff., Apr. 1919- See, also, H. H. Whetzel, Outl. Hist, of 

 Phytop., op. at., 110-111. 



^^ H. W. Conn, American Society of Bacteriologists, abstracts of papers presented, 

 Science n. s. 15(375): 361-379, March 7, 1902. 



""■Science, n. s., 21(535) : 481-483, March 31, 1905. 



