518 Second European Journey 



soaking the seed in water for 10 minutes and then keeping it 

 moist for 6 hours before treating it. This," he explained, 



allows it to absorb sufficient water to become resistant, since most of the 

 injury is caused by the formaldehyd that is carried into the grain along 

 with the imbibition water. It is then soaked in one part of formalin to 

 400 parts of water for 10 minutes, drained, and covered for six hours to get 

 effective action of the remaining aldehyd vapor on all the parasites, where- 

 upon it is dried and planted. His work, repeated many times on different 

 varieties of wheat and to some extent also on other grains, shows nearly 

 as full germination and quite as good growth in the treated plots as in the 

 control plots. In fact, growth from the treated seed is stimulated a little. 



Seed disinfection, as a practical investigation technique to com- 

 bat diseases of plants, had been studied by Smith for many years. 

 In 1914, for instance, one of his reasons why he requested an 

 appropriation to study further a corn bacterial disease was because 

 he had learned that the malady " is distributed on the kernels and 

 [could] be overcome largely by proper disinfection of the seed- 

 corn, at slight expense." "^ 



In 1917 Smith published preliminary announcements"" on "A 

 New Disease of Wheat," black chaff. A careful study of it was 

 being made in his laboratory " to determine the biology of the 

 parasite and whether it is actually transmitted from the seed to 

 the young plant and so again to the seed," as he suspected. During 

 several years this seriously prevalent trouble was studied on this 

 continent and in Europe. Smith negotiated a cooperative arrange- 

 ment with workers at the Kansas and Wisconsin experiment 

 stations. Drs. Jones, A. G. Johnson, and C. S. Reddy in Wisconsin 

 were studying a bacterial disease of barley, and evidently one of 

 the points to be settled was whether the barley was the same as 

 the wheat disease. The organism finally described was Bacterium 

 translucens var. undulosum n. var.,"^ and of this Smith said in 

 1926: ^^~ " The parasite is carried over on the seed from one crop 

 to the next and seed grain should not be obtained from diseased 

 fields." 



^"^ Memorandum presented before an agricultural committee, House of Repre- 

 sentatives. 



^^^ Jour. Agric. Res. 10(1): 51-53, July 2, 1917; PLvit Disease Bulletin 2, Sept. 1, 

 1917. Samples of the disease from various localities requested. 



"^ Smith, Jones, and Reddy, The black chaff of wheat, Science 50(1280): 48, 

 and literature cited, July 11, 1919. 



^^^ Fifty years of pathology, op. cit., 56-57. 



