Last W'oKK. I-inai. 1 logons 593 



of Tropacolum fasciatioii due to crown gall, and prepared a short 

 paper which was afterward revised with new material from 

 further study added, and published by Phytolhithology''' under 

 the title " Fasciation and prolepsis due to crowngall." At one 

 time, most of the crown gall inoculated nasturtiums showed 

 " shoots developing from the inoculated axil and from no other." 

 He photographed one plant which had " three sets of branches,'" 

 the main axis bearing secondary, tertiary, and quaternary shoots, 

 all within a period of two months. " Strangely suggestive," he 

 commented, " of what occurs in peach yellows." ^° Within a few 

 months he photographed a nasturtium shoot which showed that 

 the translocation of starch had been hindered by a crown gall. 

 His memoranda read:" "There is much more in two swollen 

 shoots from this axil than in the main stem. The main stem is 

 long and has many leaves. These shoots have lost almost all 

 leaves and the larger ones have begun to shrivel at apex (5 of 

 the 12 inches). These stems ha\;e a diameter twice that of the 

 main axis below the tumor. There is more sugar in the juice of 

 the main axis." After dissecting more shoots, he found there wms 

 a " damming back of the starch." 



In his paper on the subject he suggested that in this disease 



we may have all varieties of stimulating secondary effects on normal tissues, 

 from prolepsis of uninjured leaf and flower bud and root anlage in the 

 vicinity of the tumors, through simple fusions or divisions (fasciations), 

 to the breaking up of the dormant bud, or of a cambium, into dozens and 

 even hundreds of small vegetative fragments which may either grow as 

 roots or shoots on the surface of the tumor or be buried in its depths. 



As interesting as any suggestion w^as his assumption that the 

 initial disturbance may have begun in the embryonic or dormant 

 bud stage — an observation not unlike the embryonal hypothesis 

 of the origin of cancer, possibly. Smith pointed out that similar 

 phenomena were to be found in the animal world — " many 

 interesting figures of trunk and limb duplications or fusions, 

 especially of parts of the human body." Recently, he said, Charles 

 Rupert Stockard, professor of anatomy of Cornell Medical College 

 and an investigator for the Huntington Fund for Cancer Research, 

 and others, had started experimental studies, and these Smith 



'= 12: 263-270, 1922. 

 ""Diar)-, Jan. 14, 1922. 

 "'Diary, April 13, 14, 1922. 



