304 The Botanical Gazette. [November, 



after being drawn into the tube, could be introduced into any 

 part of the plant, even into the woody base of squash vines. 

 When the inoculation was made near the end of a vine, the 

 latter rotted away in from three to four days, and when nearer 

 the base a longer time was required, but in all cases an ulcer 

 was formed which spread more or less rapidly depending upon 

 the tissue infected. In old stems the decay was almost en- 

 tirely internal, and did not show much until the disease had 

 spread through the pith to some distant soft parts. A medi- 

 cine dropper was employed to place a charge in the middle of 

 several petioles of large squash leaves. Upon the next visit, 

 twenty-four hours after, all such leaves had fallen to the 

 ground, and the portion of the petioles below the point of in- 

 oculation, six or more inches in some cases, were thoroughly 

 decayed. In short, the bacterial disease first found in the 

 cucumber and afterwards propagated from fruit to fruit in 

 the laboratory, as also upon cut stems and petioles, is readily 

 transmitted to vigorous living vines of the cucumber and squash 

 in the field. 



Sixteen seeds of summer crooked squash were divided into 

 two equal lots, and each set of eight planted in a flower pot 

 under a bell jar and in every way treated alike, except that 

 the soil of one pot was watered at the beginning of the ex- 

 periment with the juice of a cucumber which had decayed 

 with bacteria. The eight seeds not receiving the bacterial 

 liquid germinated quickly producing large, deep green plants, 

 while in the other pot only two plants appeared above ground, 

 and they were of a dwarfed, sickly, yellow color, and did not 

 continue to grow. These two plants were quite close to the 

 side of the pot and did not receive a full wetting by the bac- 

 terial water. The remaining six seeds when removed from 

 the soil were decayed and noisome. 



Eight seeds were next placed upon blotting paper, moist- 

 ened with distilled water, and kept covered in a small artist's 

 saucer, while a duplicate set were similarly placed, but wet 

 with a solution containing bacteria from a decaying cucumber. 

 Mere again the untreated seeds all grew with usual vigor, 

 while those in contact with the bacterial germs failed to ger- 

 minate and soon decayed. 



The pure virus was next introduced into the growing stems 

 and green fruits of the tomato, and in both cases quickly pro- 

 duced a decay that caused the stems to fall and the fruit to 



