THOMAS JONATHAN BURRILL. 857 



and for several years a director of the New York, New Haven & 

 Hartford Railroad. 



He was a member of many learned societies, among them the 

 National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences, an honorary member of the Mineralogical Society of England, 

 a foreign member of the Geological Society of Edinburgh, of the Royal 

 Bavarian Academy of Sciences of Munich. He was president of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1881. He 

 received the degree of Doctor of Laws from Harvard University in 

 1886. 



George Jarvis Brush will always occupy one of the foremost places 

 in the scientific and educational history of the country. 



C. H. Warren. 



THOMAS JONATHAN BURRILL (1839-1916). 



Fellow in Class II, Section 2, 1915. 



Thomas Jonathan Burrill was born at Pittsfield, Mass., April 25, 

 1839. When nine years old his family removed to Stephenson 

 County, Illinois. He attended the Rockport High School and 

 graduated from the State Normal University near Bloomington in 

 1865. In 1868 he was appointed assistant professor of botany in 

 the University of Illinois and in 1870 he was made professor of 

 botany which position he held until his retirement forty-four years 

 later. He died April 14, 1916, at Urbana, Illinois. 



Prof. Burrill 's scientific reputation is based mainly on his work on 

 fungi, especially those which cause diseases of plants. In a paper read 

 at the meeting of the A. A. A. S. in 1880 he stated that the fire-blight 

 of the pear-tree and the twig-blight of the apple-tree were due to the 

 same cause, a species of Bacteriaceae to which in a more detailed paper 

 in 1882 he gave the name of Micrococcus amylovorus. This was practi- 

 cally the first paper published in this country on the bacterial diseases 

 of plants, a subject which has subsequently been treated by many 

 writers. Burrill also published valuable papers on the fungus diseases 

 of other cultivated plants. The Parasitic Fungi of Illinois in two 

 parts, 1885 and 1887, was an excellent treatise on the Uredineae and 



