58 PROTECTION OF PLANTS — 1923-24 



At that time, the teachings and discoveries of a few German botanists were 

 attracting to their chairs the young students of Europe. Millardet also went to 

 Germany to study pure and apphed botany with Hofmeister, at Heidelburg, and 

 de Bary at Frielburg. Under the direction of these learned professors, he 

 initiated himself into the art of hybridization which was then assuming consi- 

 derable development, and plant pathology which was then beginning to give 

 up its secrets. 



Returning to France, Millardet obtained from the Sorbonne his degrees 

 of Doctor of Medicine and of Sciences. Still a young man (1869) he became 

 Professor of botany at the Faculty of Science of Strassburg. After the Franco- 

 Prussian war, his former Professor, de Bary, was to succeed him at the pro- 

 fessorship of Strassburg and he became Professor of botany at Nancy. It was 

 there that the Academy of Sciences found him in 1876, at the time of the crisis 

 of destruction of the magnificent vineyards of the south of France. 



The prosperity of the vine-growing region was dangerously menaced by 

 the Phylloxera, a redout able insect the multiplication of which was rendering 

 sterile and was ruining the vine yards of France where it elected domicile. As 

 every one knowns, this insect had been imported into France with American 

 vines, and as early as 1862 its presence was discovered. Its ravages at first 

 insignificant increased with the number of its legions, so much that fifteen 

 years later, the officials and savants were moved and resolved to act without 

 delay. The Academy of Sciences took in hand the fight against the invader 

 and delegated to Bordeaux Alexis Millardet as professor of botany with mission 

 to study the ravages and to discover means of combating it. From now on this 

 region will be the field of action of the botanist and phytopathologist ; he will 

 occupy for twenty seven years (1872-1899) this post, which he will abandon 

 but three years before his death, in 1902. 



Up to that time Millardet had been noted for his researches in pure bo- 

 tany and had thus won a high reputation. On his arrival at Bordeaux his 

 whole time is given to the task of saving the vine, and, by his persevering works^ 

 guided by a tested and enlightened science, by an acute sense of observation, 

 saves viticulture from ruin. Without losing time with measures of doubtful 

 eflEicacy he is searching for a somewhat permanent means of struggle and by 

 this conception of the application he is closely related to Pasteur, the savior of 

 sericulture. 



His patient researches permitted him to establish the scale of resistance 

 of the said vines. But this resistance is only partial. Millardet then attempts 

 to guard against this insufficiency bj^ practising hybridization of the types both 

 fecund and resisting. He opened the way to hybridization, showed its technic 

 and created types that have rendered and still render the greatest services to 

 vine-growers. 



This first enemy checked, a second raised its head in 1878 and in its turn 

 ravaged the vineyards; it was mildew. From work undertaken by Millardet, 



