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Fargo (North Dakota) from July 19th to 23rd. The more 
important objects were, however, to visit a number of the chief 
centres of agricultural and botanical research in the eastern, 
southern and middle western States, and to meet as many of 
those engaged in research and the organization of research in 
these subjects as was possible in the time at my disposal. The 
specific aims that I had in view were : (1) to bring the international 
aspects of the work of the Imperial Bureau of Mycology before 
our American’ colleagues; (2) to enlist their co-operation in 
certain branches of this work, and to ascertain what assistance 
we might expect to obtain in the United States; (3) to examine 
the organization and present development of the study of plant 
pathology and its application to the prevention and control of 
crop diseases in the United States; and (4) to visit some of the 
chief crop areas of the eastern half of the country and see the 
conditions under which the crops are grown and the measures 
taken to improve varieties and methods. The time at my disposal 
was insufficient to carry out this last adequately. 
The Conference on cereal diseases was attended by some fifty 
members of the American Phytopathological Society (including 
several Canadians), a few American visitors, and representatives 
from England, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines. It met at 
St. Paul from the 19th to the 21st of July, moved to Fargo on the 
night of the 21st, and terminated there at 10 p.m. on the 22nd. 
The daylight hours were mostly given to field meetings at the 
experimental farms at St. Paul and Fargo and automobile trips 
through the wheat belt of Minnesota and North Dakota, while 
meetings to discuss specific subjects were held in the evenings. 
The members were also taken through one of the largest elevators 
and flour mills in Minneapolis. The Conference concerned itself 
chiefly with the cereal rusts, particularly with the control of 
black rust by breeding resistant varieties, and the campaign for 
eradicating the barberry, on which this parasite spends part of its 
life; with the diseases caused by Helminthosporium, Fusarium, 
and Sclerospora; and with the newly introduced “ take-all”’ and 
“* flag-smut ” of wheat. There is probably more work being done 
on these subjects than on any other branch of plant pathology in 
the United States at the present moment, and we had the benefit 
of having this work explained, and in some cases demonstrated, 
by those actually engaged in it. Educationally, the Conference 
was of considerable value. 
Both before and after the Conference I visited a number of 
scientific institutions east of the Mississippi from Michigan to 
New Orleans, with a view to establishing direct relations with 
American mycologists and plant pathologists. Owing to the 
prominence given to the study of these subjects there are at 
present more men at work on them in the United States than in 
any other country. This work is being pursued not only in 
institutions specifically for applied science, such as the Bureau of 
Plant Industry at Washington and the State Experiment Stations, 
