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remained in the soil in viable condition for eight years without a suitable 
host in the meantime, aud the extent to which rotation of crops serves 
to check the disease is yet uncertain. The disease-resistant varieties of 
melon so far provided do not equal the others in flavor, so say our In- 
diana growers, and are consequently not much used. It is, therefore, still 
a large problem for the plant pathologist to find means for protecting 
the melon crop and others of like nature from the attack of such destruc- 
tive germs. 
A similar disease of the tomato has been very injurious at times in 
Indiana. Mr. W. H. Dyer of Vincennes reports a loss during the one 
season of 1913 of 6,000 bushels of fruit, some thirty acres of his field being 
entirely destroyed by the Fusarium wilt. Other soil diseases, like leaf 
spot, fruit rot, etc., also prove destructive at times. 
Some of the lenf diseases of potato may be checked by spraying with 
Bordeaux mixture, while for scab on the tubers a serviceable and practical 
remedy is known in formaldehyde, showing that some good work has been 
accomplished along this line. But there are a number of other diseases, 
often Causing heavy loss, that are little understood, and whose method of 
control is yet to be discovered. Mr. W. A. Orton of the United States 
Department of Agriculture stated recently before the Wisconsin Potato 
Growers’ Association that six million dollars were lost to the country 
during the present year of 1914 from potato diseases. 
There are a number of damping-off diseases to be classed here. They 
attack the young plants and cause them to die before becoming established. 
In the field the disease will spread from plant to plant over large areas. 
One season a field of beets was reported as largely destroyed in this way. 
But it is in cutting beds and seed beds under glass where such ravages 
are most marked. 
The growing of vegetables under glass has become a large industry 
in Indiana. It is a kind of intensive culture where every individual plant 
bears an important relation to the final profits. Complaints are frequently 
received of losses in the cucumber and lettuce crops, which prove to be 
due to the inroads of the fungus, Sclerotinia libertiana, sometimes called 
lettuce-drop. 
These diseases, and many similar ones are believed to be harbored in 
the soil from year to year, and in some cases to be carried from crop to 
crop by the seed, and possibly by other yet undetected means. How 
many kinds of germs are concerned in such diseases is not yet known. 
