THE PRESENT ERA 115 



keen appreciation of the necessity for more intelligent 

 legislation and efforts in meeting similar danger to other 

 crops. It has been, like the potato blight epidemics of 

 the early forties, a potent factor in giving to the lay mind 

 a proper appreciation of the importance of phytopathol- 

 ogy in the economics of crop production. The history 

 of this epiphytotic has been accurately outlined by 

 Anderson and Rankin. 1 



I have intentionally refrained from an attempt to 

 analyze in more detail the trend of phytopathologic 

 thought and development in the present era. We are 

 too near to it, being in the midst of it, to justly weigh the 

 relative importance of passing events and current contri- 

 butions. Those who are making the history of our sci- 

 ence are our friends and our colleagues. Their scientific 

 faults and virtues are likely to loom up quite out of pro- 

 portion to their real significance in the evolution of 

 plant pathology. My verdict on the makers of the 

 Millardetian period is doubtless more or less invalidated 

 for the same reason. Some of them still stand forth in 

 the flesh to challenge or accuse me; those whom I have 

 named and those whom I have refrained from naming. 

 To each his consolation; to the former, that he stands 

 among the founders of the science in this country; to the 

 latter, that somewhere in the annals of plant pathology 

 future historians must give him a place. 



1 Anderson, P. J., and Rankin, W. H.: Endothia canker of Chest- 

 nut, New York (Cornell) Agr. Exp. Sta. Bui. 347 : 538-545, 1914. 



