42 
UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 
Mr. Horart W. WiiiaMs has given to the 
University of Chicago property to the value 
of $2,000,000, the gift being in memory of his 
father, Eli Buell Williams, and his mother, 
Harriet B. Williams. Part of the income of 
this great gift goes toward the development of 
the school of commerce and administration 
at the university. 
Tue late Sir George Hare Philipson has by 
his will bequeathed £2,000 to the University 
of Durham College of Medicine, Newcastle-on- 
Tyne, for the foundation of two Philipson 
scholarships to be awarded to the undergradu- 
ate of the college obtaining the highest marks 
at the M.B. final examination. 
Dr. T. Brarsrorp Ropertson, formerly pro- 
fessor of biochemistry and pharmacology in 
the University of California, has been ap- 
pointed professor of biochemistry in the Uni- 
yersity of Toronto. Also, Professor J. J. R. 
Macleod, formerly professor of biochemistry 
and physiology in the Western Reserve Uni- 
yersity, has been appointed professor of phys- 
iology in the University of Toronto. 
Dr. Exias J. Duranp has been appointed 
professor of botany in the University of Min- 
nesota. Dr. Durand was formerly an instruc- 
tor at Cornell, but since 1910 has held a pro- 
fessorship in the University of Missouri. 
’Proressor Henry Buumpere, of the Uni- 
versity of Nebraska has accepted a position in 
the mathematical department of the Univer- 
sity of Illinois. 
Dr. F. S. Nowxan, of Columbia University, 
has been appointed instructor in mathematics 
in Bowdoin College. 
DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
BROWN ROT OF SOLANACEZ ON RICINUS 
Bacterium solanacearum, the brown-rot or- 
ganism, was first described by the senior 
writer from tomato, potato and eggplant in 
1896 and from tobacco in 1908, on each of 
which it causes a widespread and serious dis- 
SCIENCE 
[N. 8. Von. XLVIII. No. 1228 
ease. In recent years, chiefly through the 
studies of Honing in Sumatra, this organism 
has come to be known as a parasite not re- 
stricted to the Solanacee but capable of at- 
tacking plants of various orders from Urti- 
cacee to Composite, including Leguminose 
(peanut, and indigo), Euphorbiacer (Aca- 
lypha), and Verbenacee (young teak trees). 
Since Honing’s discoveries it has been deter- 
mined in the United States to be the natural 
cause of a wilt of the peanut (Fulton and 
Winston) and of the common cultivated Tro- 
peolum (Katherine Bryan). More recently 
Stanford and Wolf in studying its effects on 
tobacco in North Carolina have found it also 
on Southern weeds (Ambrosia artemisiifolia, 
Eclipta alba) and have successfully inoculated 
it into a variety of plants including Croton 
and Huphorbia. 
To the already considerable list of natural 
host plants must now be added the castor oil 
plant (Ricinus communis) on which it has 
appeared to a discouraging extent in several 
localities in our Southern States (Georgia, 
Florida) where Ricinus has been extensively 
planted this year to supply lubricating oil for 
army needs. 
The Ricinus plants wilt in various stages of 
growth, often early, the woody part of the stem 
being stained brown and filled with a gray or 
brown bacterial slime which when cultivated 
pure yields the typical colonies an agar poured 
plates, browns potato cylinders, reduces ni- 
trates, blues litmus milk, and otherwise in 
media behaves like Bactertwm solanacearum 
from other hosts. When cross inoculated to 
tomato shoots it wilts them promptly, brown- 
ing the vascular bundles, filling them with 
the typical gray slime and hollowing the pith 
into bacterial cavities. With it we have also 
produced the bacterial wilt on tobacco. 
Furthermore, by needle pricks, using a sub- 
culture from a typical colony on an agar plate, 
which was poured from the interior of one of 
the wilting tomatoes above referred to, we have 
not only produced the disease again on toma- 
toes but also have produced it on several other 
plants known to be subject to Bacterium sola- 
nacearum, e. g., Datura stramoniuwm, Im- 
