Ri-si;ARCH ON Plant Tumors 483 



and the tomato had now made it impossible to grow tliese crops 

 on many tields. Smith cxphiined to the House of Representatives' 

 agricultural committee: 



There is a bacterial tobacco disease in Nortli Carolina and I-lorida of 

 such magnitude and destructive power that if it continues to spread 

 unchecked for the next 25 years we may confidently expect the tobacco 

 industry of the United States to be practically wiped out. 1 know the cause 

 of this disease. I wish to study further the habits of the parasite, hoping 

 to find some way of attacking it. I think we ought to be able to find a way 

 to cultivate tobacco again on the badly infested lands, something which is 

 not now possible, as the organism persists in the soil. 



As to diseases of corn, he stated his 



wish to continue my studies of bacterial diseases of corn, broom corn and 

 sorghum in the field, and to study critically the causes of the molding of 

 corn in freight cars and elevators. The losses are now very great and if 

 they could be eliminated, which seems to me quite possible, the price paid 

 to the producers in our central and western states could be increased several 

 cents a bushel, the prices now paid being made low enough to recoup all 

 losses in transit. 



In the West Indies, also, serious curtailment or perhaps eventual 

 destruction of profitable plant industries was threatened by dis- 

 eases. Two such which Smith had studied, determined the cause, 

 and for which he was still seeking a remedy or control method 

 were the bacterial bud-rot of the coconut palm (1905) (Science 

 21: 500) and the banana disease, due to Fusarium cuhense {Science 

 31: 754) which by 1926 " belted the globe." 



October 16, 1914, at the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of 

 the Missouri Botanical Garden, Smith by invitation read a paper, 

 "A Conspectus of Bacterial Diseases of Plants," "^ a scholarly con- 

 densation of principles and knowledge, and the substance of which 

 formed the basis of the first chapter of his textbook, An Intro- 

 duction to Bacterial Diseases of Plants, published some six years 

 later. Paragraphs and some revisions in the light of new knowl- 

 edge were added when the textbook was prepared. One paragraph, 

 in connection with methods of control, should be regarded pro- 

 phetically relevant to modern science today: " One of my fancies," 

 Smith wrote in 1920,-® " is that plant pathologists will eventually 



■^Annals of the Mo. Bot. Garden 2: 377-401, Feb.-April 1915. 

 -^ Intro, to bad. dis. of plants, op. cit., 74. 



