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had been understood in 1904, the City would not only have been 
spared the loss of the trees and the financial loss thereby entailed, 
but the disease might have been brought under control here and 
its spread to surrounding territory prevented or controlled. 
To be sure, tree diseases are not as vital a matter as human dis- 
eases, but there is every reason why the City should generously 
support investigations into the nature and control of plant dis- 
eases just as it maintains a department of health. It should not 
depend upon outside agencies and organizations in one case any 
more than in the other. 
It is particularly fitting for an institution like the Brooklyn 
Botanic Garden to prosecute studies along such fundamental lines 
as disease resistance in plants—work not adequately provided for 
elsewhere—as well as along lines of immediate concern, like the 
diseases of trees in streets, parks, and watersheds. Work along 
these lines is reported in the following paragraphs. 
Diseases of Trees 
Chestnut Disease —Acting as collaborator in the Office of In- 
vestigation in Forest Pathology, Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. 
Department of Agriculture, Dr. Graves has extended the study 
of disease-resistant chestnuts which he located in the vicinity of 
New York in 1918. About two dozen two-year-old seedlings, 
offspring of these New York trees, are now growing in the ex- 
perimental plot of the Garden, from which it is hoped to de- 
termine whether the parental character of resistance is inherited. 
Experiments in crossing this native New York stock with the 
resistant Japanese and Chinese species are under way. 
Butternut Disease —Dr. Graves has finished his investigations 
of the disease which is seriously affecting our butternut trees. 
In October his paper “The Melanconis Disease of the Butter- 
nut” appeared in the journal, Phytopathology, summarizing the 
results of his work, which covered a period of four years. The 
Japanese Walnut, a close relative of the native butternut, is also 
extremely susceptible. Dr. Graves has worked out the life history 
of the causal fungus, having linked together two stages of its 
development, formerly thought to be distinct fungi, and has 
