DIVISION OF BOTANY. 



George E. Stone and Ralph E. Smith. 



In the presentation of this bulletin by the Botanical department 

 we ought first of all perhaps to explain why we have undertaken a 

 work which is zodlogical rather than botanical in its nature. For 

 five or six years many complaints of damages caused to plants by 

 nematode worms have been addressed to the Station. Since the 

 trouble was not brought about by any vegetable organism such as a 

 fungus it did not strictly belong to our consideration. The only 

 other department of the Station to which it could be referred was 

 the entomological, and since worms are not insects it might be 

 questionable whether investigations of this nature would belong to 

 that department. What is true in our Station seems to have been 

 the case in most other states. We find more or less mention of dam- 

 ages caused by nematodes in the reports and bulletins of the differ- 

 ent experiment stations, but in hardly any case has the subject been 

 investigated. This is not due to negligence on the part of station 

 workers, but simply to the fact that few stations have any department 

 to which this work would fall, inasmuch as the study of worms 

 belongs to specialists in the domain of zoology. As a consequence 

 very little has been done in investigating the pest in this country and 

 nothing at all in this section, though the necessity for such investiga- 

 tion has been continually increasing. It should be stated, however, 

 that such study as has been made upon this subject has been done 

 almost entirely by botanists. 



Realizing the impossibility of making definite recommendations 

 to those seeking advice in the matter and feeling that the subject 

 was one of great importance to the gardeners of Massachusetts, we 

 finally undertook investigations, the results of which are contained 

 in this bulletin.* 



*We wish here to express our thanks to our colleague Prof. C. H. Fernald of the Entomo- 

 logical Division of the Station for many courtesies which he has shown us in this work. 



