certain parts of northern Mexico. The threatened invasion of 
another new cotton disease in the shape of the rust had, there- 
fore, really great and wide-reaching significance. 
I left Washington, Tuesday, July 24, 1917, and arrived at 
Mission, Texas, near the center of the infested region, on Friday, 
July 27. I was met at Pharr, Texas, by Dr. John J. Morton, 
resident agent of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, who was 
responsible in the first place for calling the attention of federal 
and state authorities to the serious nature of the cotton rust 
disease. Dr: Morton showed me every courtesy and many 
times went far out of his way to help me in my investigations. 
Under the guidance of Dr. Morton, I spent the afternoon 
and part of the following day driving about the country around 
Mission, getting acquainted with the extent of spread of the 
disease and the possible damage resulting from it. Since the 
yellow rust stage on the leaves of the cotton had died down and 
ceased to spread about three weeks to a month before my arrival 
in Texas, and since the plants on which I found the remnants 
of the disease seemed to have recovered in large part from the 
results of the infection, I found it difficult if not impossible for 
me to make any reliable estimate of damage. I found, however, 
abundant indications that a serious epidemic must have occurred. 
A comparatively few of the lower leaves of many cotton plants 
still showed old infections, most of them dead, some of the spots 
as large as a dime or even larger having fallen out, leaving holes 
in the leaf. The most convincing evidence, however, of the 
serious nature of the disease was furnished by the abundance of 
dead leaves often found lying on the ground between the rows.. 
These showed old rust spots, sometimes a dozen or more to the 
leaf, and had evidently fallen from the plants as a result of the 
rust infection. Such defoliation resulting from a spring-rust, 
or aecidium, stage is, in my experience, exceedingly rare. 
Dr. Morton’s observations, extending over the time of greatest 
virulence of the rust attack (toward the end of June), led him 
to the following conclusions. The area covered by the epidemic 
extended east and west from about Sam Fordyce to San Juan, 
a distance of about thirty-six miles, and from the Rio Grande 
north about fifteen miles. He estimated the damage in this area 
