28 TENGE ANNUAL REPORT: 
applied science in the domain of living things offers greater 
difficulties than the sciences applied in engineering and other 
technological lines by reason of the variations in the organ- 
isms themselves, it ought not to surprise us that this applied 
botany should make at times slow advances. Such has 
been the case all along the line of agricultural application. 
It would not be against some things that have already passed 
into history were the lingering, or inherent hostility to 
useful knowledge as a part of the subject matter of colle- 
giate instruction to have had something to do with the tardy 
recognition given to plant pathology in this, the foremost 
country of the earth, in the application of the remedial 
methods, its study has brought to our people. A good 
many of us have heard the sneer often accorded to really 
fine work in applied botany. 
However much weight we may give the foregoing 
considerations, it must not be denied that vegetable 
pathology as a well rounded division of botany has been 
compelled to pass severe tests, to suffer disadvantages. 
The tendency in some quarters to restrict the applica- 
tion of the term vegetable pathology to a study of the 
cryptogamic parasites upon plants, has been a great draw- 
back. Parasitology has been developed to the narrowing 
and dwarfing of the true science. Doubtless this is the 
idea which finds expression in the catalogued courses of 
“economic mycology.” One well known and liberal minded 
botanist, himself a professor of botany, made the remark 
to me some two years ago, that he would acknowledge that 
we possessed a science of plant parasitology, but that the 
science of plant pathology seemed to him to require build- 
ing up on the non-parasitic side before we could consider 
it a well developed division of the science of botany. I 
may mention here in passing that the development in this 
country of economic entomology, apart from botany, 
wherein its application rests if it attain economic rank as to 
plants, has also divided forces when compared with the 
course of events in Germany and the remainder of Conti- 
nental Europe. 
