DISEASES OF THE CHESTNUT AND OTHER TREES 73 



In the Department of Agriculture an office to study forest 

 -diseases exclusively was not organized until 1907. The State 

 experiment stations and private investigators have paid little 

 attention to forest diseases from the first. The result is that as 

 we survey the field the fact that most impresses us is our igno- 

 rance on the practical aspects of the entire subject. Before we 

 can actually accomplish much in the way of control we have got to 

 discover, in many cases, the cause, the symptoms, and above all the 

 biological relations of any given disease, before we can even sug- 

 gest preventive or curative measures. So far as possible these 

 fundamental researches must be made; but this is exactly what is 

 the hardest thing to do, for it is most difficult to get either finan- 

 cial or moral support for work of this sort. The community 

 pays the physician for his routine services; but if one physician 

 desires not to cure disease but to investigate how disease now 

 incurable may be cured in the future, the community has little 

 support for him. 



The Chestnut Bark Disease. 



I wish to speak to you primarily on the subject of the chest- 

 nut bark disease by way of giving point to these preliminary 

 remarks, and I may say that epidemics which appear with relative 

 suddenness demonstrate more clearly than any other classes of 

 disease our need of fundamental knowledge. The chestnut bark 

 disease has probably existed in the neighborhood of Long Island 

 for at least twenty years, slowly gaining headway in that time, 

 but it was not called to public attention until 1904, and in the 

 eight years that have since passed it has caused not less than 

 twenty-five million dollars' loss of property. There was a time 

 at its inception when this disease could undoubtedly have been 

 controlled at relatively small expense, but the public lacked both 

 the knowledge and inclination to do it. We lacked even knowledge 

 of the existence of the disease, and there was no person whose 

 business it was to be familiar with such diseases and on a lookout 

 for them. You can readily figure for yourselves that the interest 

 on a small fraction of twenty-five millions of dollars would have 



