158 PLANT PATHOLOGY 



and the results are far more numerous and valuable; just as the 

 mineral output of the world has been vastly increased where large 

 corporations have supplanted the individual miners who worked 

 for personal gain and love of wild life. 



To start the science into this augmented development required an 

 unusual combination of circumstances. So long as the farmer was 

 content to lose from ten to fifty per cent of his crop of grain from 

 smut, rust, or other fungous diseases, and ascribe it to the vague and 

 uncontrollable action of the weather or the season, no concentration 

 of effort was made to understand the nature of the disease, as a dis- 

 ease, and to invent methods of eliminating it from the fields. It 

 required an epidemic severe enough to bring discomforts and threaten 

 poverty in order to start an outcry that would be heeded, and 

 divert the forces of science into a new channel. Such an occasion was 

 the epidemic of potato disease of 1844 and 1845 in northern Europe, 

 and notably in Ireland, where a famine resulted. But the region 

 did not possess scientific men prepared to cope with the situation. 

 Another such occasion was the introduction of the grape mildew 

 into the wine districts of France. The downy mildew of the grape, 

 common in America, but never epidemic, was first noticed in south- 

 western France in 1878. By 1882 it had .become so destructive 

 that in many vineyards about Bordeaux, where proximity to the 

 ocean kept the atmosphere moist and favorable to fungal growth, 

 the leaves dropped from the vines and the harvest of fruit was almost 

 worthless. Here was a critical situation, and the man to cope with 

 it was not wanting. That man was M. Millardet, professor in the 

 Academy of Science at Bordeaux. A fortunate observation at this 

 time was put to the test during the season of 1883, and through per- 

 sistent study and experimentation carried on by Millardet, and by 

 others under his direction, and by still others working independently, 

 the most important fungicide yet known was soon in general use, 

 and a great industry saved to France. The substance employed has 

 been called from the first the Bordeaux Mixture, and consisted of 

 lime and sulphate of copper in solution, which was sprayed upon 

 the foliage. 



It was the introduction of spraying in the early eighties that 

 gave new life and new direction to the study of pathology. It also 

 shifted the geographic centre of activity in the study of plant dis- 

 eases from Silesia, where it had remained from the earliest times, 

 westward into France. Nevertheless France was not destined to 

 hold this advantage long. 



In September, 1SS4, the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science appointed a committee l on the "Encouragement 



1 The members of this committee were J. C. Arthur, C. E. Bessey, W. G. Farlow, 

 T. J. Burrill, J. T. Rothrock, W. J. Deal, and C. H. Peck. The following year the 



