512 Second European Journey 



west, the work of B. M. Duggar at the Missouri Botanical Garden, 

 and that of L. O. Kunkel at the Boyce Thompson Institute for 

 Plant Research at Yonkers, New York.^^ 



Kunkel, a graduate of the University of Missouri and the Shaw 

 School of Botany, had secured in 1914 his doctorate of philosophy 

 degree under Dr. R. A. Harper at Columbia University. Granted 

 a scholarship, he had spent the next years in graduate study at the 

 University of Freiburg, Germany. The comparatively new subject 

 of virus plant disease research had attracted him, and, when an 

 opportunity with the Bureau of Plant Industry was offered, he 

 accepted. While at Columbia he had been a research assistant, 

 and at the University of Missouri he had been an assistant in 

 botany. 



His first work as a pathologist with the Department of Agri- 

 culture was on potato diseases. In 1913 W. A. Orton had 

 published ^^ on "Leaf roll, curly leaf, and other new potato 

 diseases " among which a mosaic disease similar to the mosaic 

 of tobacco, tomato, and other crops was mentioned. Kunkel, 

 beginning his work under Dr. I. E. Melhus and Orton, spent his 

 summers in Maine and his winters at Washington. In one of his 

 first interviews with ofHcials of the Department, he had told Dr. 

 Charles Brooks that he wanted to study peach yellows, and in 

 the autumn of 1914 he became acquainted with Dr. Smith. So 

 commendable was his work regarded by Smith that in 1916-1917 

 he recommended Kunkel to Dr. Van Hall of the Instituut voor 

 Planten-Ziekten en Cultures for an appointment at Buitenzorg, 

 Java. World War I made it impossible for Kunkel to accept this 

 appointment. But early in 1919 Smith again recommended him 

 to Dr. H. A. Lyon of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Experiment 

 Station and persuaded him to accept the offer to go to Hawaii 

 and study mosaic disease of sugar cane. Kunkel left the Bureau 

 and went to Hawaii in 1920. 



Mosaic disease of sugar cane recently had been found in 

 Louisiana and other southern states, and since the middle of the 

 decade had caused severe lossess in parts of Puerto Rico. E. W. 

 Brandes, formerly pathologist of the Puerto Rico Agricultural 

 Station at Mayaguez and now in sugar-plant investigations with 



""Fifty years of pathology, op. cil., 35-36. 

 ^"'Phytopathology 3(1): 69, Feb. 1913. 



