9 6 



BACTERIA IN RELATION TO PLANT DISEASES. 



In general, the working capacity of a laboratory will be greatly increased by 

 giving the director a stipulated sum of money per annum and carte blanche to buy 

 laboratory necessities whenever and wherever and in whatever quantity he sees fit, 

 requiring only that he submit vouchers ; also by the employment of a number 

 of subordinate assistants of special fitness, to whom may be assigned much of the 

 purely mechanical and routine work of the laboratory, such as the proper cleaning 

 of glassware, the making of ordinary culture media, the keeping alive of stock 

 cultures, the preparation of staining media, the embedding, cutting, and staining of 

 microtome sections, the making of photographs, the indexing of literature, etc. 



No scientific man should be willing to trust any 

 piece of work in his own line to an assistant unless 

 he can do it as well himself, or better, but when it 

 has become to him the merest routine, his time, if 

 worth anything, can be more profitably employed 

 in something else. In most American laboratories 

 which the writer has visited there is a woeful lack of 

 intelligent subordinate assistance, such, for example, 

 as that furnished by the German "Diener" and the 

 Malays of Java. Every assistant can not hope to be- 

 come at once an independent investigator, although, 

 if competent, his work should always be shaped 

 toward this desirable end. 



A good library should be within easy reach, and 

 as a suggestion to this end a list of useful books and 

 papers is appended under the head of Bibliography 

 of General Literature. A card catalogue of current 

 literature is also very useful and in time becomes 

 invaluable if properly made. 



Fig. 81.* 



CARE OF THE LABORATORY. 



The laboratory should be a clean place. Its walls should be of such material 

 that they can be rinsed or wiped down occasionally. The floors, doors, tables, 

 window-sashes, etc., should be wiped every day, every other day, or at least every 

 third day, with clean cloths wet in distilled water, boiled water, or clean lake or 

 artesian water. The use of river water, swarming as it does very frequently with 

 all sorts of bacteria, is not to be commended for cleaning purposes, and brooms 

 should be taboo. No one should enter the laboratory who has not business there, 

 and order and quiet should prevail. 



*FiG. 81. End of the vacuum-pipe on laboratory table. The gage serves to show the degree of 

 exhaustion, i. e., whether there is any leak in the piping between the engine-room and the labora- 

 tory. The two rooms should be connected by a speaking-tube. 



