February, '19] SANDERS: potato wart disease 87 



Greater interest must attach to the fact that this disease has been 

 firmly established for at least eight years in an unusual situation, where 

 it might have continued undetected for several years longer except for 

 its almost accidental discovery. 



Hidden away in the gardens of the small mining villages, where the 

 consumption of potatoes much exceeds the production, the disease 

 might have continued its advance for a few years to other localities 

 similarly situated, without spreading to the larger potato-growing dis- 

 tricts nearby, where eventually it would have appeared in our public 

 markets, and attracted the attention of inspectors and the more en- 

 lightened growers. 



Immediately following the discovery of the disease, the writer went 

 to Washington and conferred with Dr. W. A. Orton of the Bureau of 

 Plant Industry, to secure the assistance of trained men to aid in our 

 survey, which must be hurriedly carried out because potato digging 

 was already starting in the Hazleton district, which lies at an altitude 

 varying from 1,600 to 2,000 feet elevation. Doctor Orton, keenly 

 alive to the dangerous situation, sent several of his trained men, and 

 called on several plant pathologists who had been engaged in the Fed- 

 eral plant disease survey, to aid in the work. Field men of the Penn- 

 sylvania Bureau of Zoology were called in as rapidly as possible, and 

 in about six weeks, approximately three hundred mining villages, 

 towns and cities were hastily surveyed by garden inspections. At the 

 close of our season's work, a total of twenty-eight villages and towns 

 were found infected in varying degrees, a few having only one, two or 

 three gardens showing the disease. 



The origin of this disease, and a few facts of its possibilities of dis- 

 persion will be of interest. The Federal Horticultural Board, as one 

 of its first official acts, fixed on September 20, 1912, a quarantine on 

 further entry of European potatoes to the United States; yet its power 

 granted by Congress came too late to avert the entiy of this disease, 

 which we must now fight with all power and ability at our command, to 

 safeguard our most important vegetable crop. 



Incjuiries from the villagers, mostly Slovaks and Polish and allied 

 races, with a few Italians, determined the fact that most of their pota- 

 toes had been bought from the company stores of the coal mining 

 companies, who in turn had purchased largely from the Hazleton Prod- 

 uce Company. Following this information, it was learned that con- 

 siderable quantities, several carloads, of Ccrman potatoes had l)een 

 bought and sold by them in 1911 and early 11)12, and hence our evi- 

 dence was sufficient. Our next problem was to determine as rapidly 

 as possible the limits of the spread of the disease; and we felt, after a 

 preliminary survey in which we found much disease, that it must also 



