OHIO STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 3 
vide adequately for instruction in plant pathology. If we 
contrast this apparent indisposition, I say apparent advis- 
edly, for those on the outside can judge as to what is being 
considered within only by announcements, if, | iepeat, we 
contrast this apparent indisposition of the institutions train- 
ing for the future physicians of the plant world, with that 
existing in medical colleges wherein there is a very concrete 
division of pathological subjects, we are forced to conclude 
that a great deal remains to be done to provide adequately 
for the future instruction that I am well assured is to be 
given in vegetable pathology. 
A body of well organized knowledge on plant diseases 
presented by teachers charged chiefly or solely with the 
giving of courses or the conduct of investigations in plant 
pathology is, I am led to believe, not solely by the course 
of demand for workers, but as well by the development of 
our agricultural practice, to be the future of vegetable 
pathology. In so far as I am aware, the only university 
whose officials have, as yet, expressed a desire and future 
purpose to put plant pathology on this foundation for the 
future, is not as one would expect endowed by public 
funds, but by private philanthropy. I am hopeful that this 
will not long remain the case. 
In choosing this subject and in the manner of pre- 
senting it, I have been guided as herein set forth inade- 
quately, by a desire to make plain the disproportion between 
the demands, in the line of applied botany, made upon many 
of the most competent graduates in botany and in the prep- 
aration they have been given for this work. It is recog- 
nized that at no other period of the world’s history have 
the universities of the time been subjected to such stress 
and expense in equipping for the demands of instruction, 
as have fallen upon those of our own day within the last 
two decades, more especially within the last one. Under 
these circumstances with the achievements of applied phys- 
ical and chemical science in the minds and on the lips of 
the inhabitants of both town and country, it is not surpris- 
ing that the equally important economic achievements in 
