72 The Botanical Gazette. [February, 
the same locality on Hypericum Canadense var. majus.—A. J. Grout, 
Johnson, Vermont. 
EDITORIAL. 
Of the new fields of botanical research developed in the last fer 
years none have shown more rapid extension and greater economtit 
importance than the study of that class of plant diseases due to part 
sitic bacteria. The first instance of such a disease was brought to notitt 
in 1880 by Burrill, of Illinois. The disease of pomaceous trees, tit” 
cause of which he discovered, best known under the name of peat 
blight, remains at the present time the most fully investigated diseas 
of its class. 
In 1884 DeBary published his work entitled Morphologie und Bio! ) 
ogie der Pilze, Mycetozoen und Bacterien, and in a brief paragraph0t” 
bacterial parasites of plants Says they have scarcely been observed, ail 
offers the suggestion that the acidity of the cell sap may partiallyer 
plain their rarity. Probably no mention of the matter would hart 
been made if the account of the yellow disease of hyacinths, with whid . 
bacteria are concerned, and which Wakker brought to light the prec! 
modified in any general is 
_ Within the last six years, however, the number of discoveries in # 
line have been astonishingly large, and it is now evident that pe 
not been so much the Scarcity of the diseases as the scarcity of ee 
€s of tomatoes, potatoes, melons, ee 
» Carnations, violets, pears and apples ™ 
dy known, and still more have been sugges 
as probably of bacterial Origin. 
