VEGETABLE PATHOLOGY AN ECONOMIC SCIENCE 



BY MERTON BENWAY WAITE 



[Merton Ben way Waite, Vegetable Pathologist, United States Department of 

 Agriculture, since 1887. b. Oregon, Illinois, January 23, 1865. B.S. University 

 of Illinois, 1887. Author of Pollination of Pear Flowers; Pear Blight and its 

 Remedy; and other botanical papers.] 



VEGETABLE pathology is a practical, economic science and is an 

 important aid to horticulture and agriculture. The science of botany 

 began, in its early days, as an economic study of medicinal herbs, 

 but the development of the subject has been mainly along the lines 

 of pure science. There are no higher motives for study than the pure 

 love of knowledge. To discover the laws and facts of plant life, for 

 the satisfaction of knowing, has doubtless been the object of most 

 of the researches of the botanists. Botany is rapidly becoming a 

 practical science, but no one despises more than myself the attitude 

 which assumes that knowledge for its own sake is not worth while 

 attaining. The enthusiasm of the botanist is proverbial. The study 

 was so fascinating that men pursued it for its own sake. In this way 

 the various departments of botanical science have been built up. 



Vegetable pathology utilizes all botanical knowledge and turns 

 it to practical account. Doubtless the diseases of plants have been 

 studied to a certain extent as pure science, but the enormous pro- 

 gress of the last twenty years in the study of plant diseases under 

 the support of governments, experiment stations, and other public 

 institutions, has been due to the practical utility of the knowledge 

 obtained. Vegetable pathology calls to its aid all departments of 

 botany as well as entomology, chemistry, physics, geology, and 

 allied natural sciences. How different were the methods of the 

 systematic botanist half a century ago from the investigating 

 pathologist of to-day. The one working in some attic or small room, 

 with his bundles of dried flowers and ferns and his collections in 

 pigeon-holes; the other, with his expensive laboratory facilities, 

 chemical and physical apparatus, greenhouses, gardens, and other 

 equipment. And yet the systematic botanist laid the foundation 

 for pathological w r ork. The early mycologists, even if some of their 

 descriptions were only three lines long, have left us very deeply 

 indebted for the names and classification of the fungi. The work- 

 ing pathologist must know systematic mycology as well as the classi- 

 fication and names of flowering plants. He must be an all-around 

 botanist. A copy of Saccardo's Sylloge Fungorum is an essential 

 in every well-equipped pathological laboratory. 



