604 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 381. 



In the time of which I speak, there were 

 already many excellent helps in the way 

 of treatises on fungi. We had, for in- 

 stance, the splendid volumes of the ' Selecta 

 Fongorum Carpologia ' by the brothers 

 Tulasne, and if we were not always sure 

 of the Latin construction, we could at least 

 read the magnificent copper plates which 

 embellish these volumes. There were also 

 books by Persoon, Corda, the Nees von 

 Essenbecks, de Notaris, Rabenhoi'st, de 

 Schweinitz, Fuckel, Bonorden and Mon- 

 tague. There were numerous volumes by 

 the Swedish mycologist Frieze. "We had 

 also Berkeley's 'Outlines,' Cook's 'Hand- 

 book of British Fungi, ' and many scattered 

 descriptions by Oudemans, Magnus, 

 Schroeter, Winter, Berkeley, Cook, Ellis, 

 de Thueraen, Rehm and others, in Hed- 

 ivigia and other journals. The Italian 

 Saceardo had not yet begun his monu- 

 mental compilation of all known species of 

 fungi, but he was printing the first parts 

 of his 'Fungi Italici.' Several parts of 

 Bref eld 's ' Untersuchungen ' also appeared 

 prior to 1880, and there was an excellent 

 ' Handbuch ' of cryptogamic plants by 

 Luerssen. There were also some good 

 exsiccati, including, in this country, the 

 first centuries by Ellis. De Bary's 'Com- 

 parative Morphology and Biology of the 

 Fungi,' and the splendid cryptogamic 

 ' Floras ' by Winter, by Schroeter and by 

 Oudemans had not yet appeared. 



In the matter of plant diseases, we were 

 much less well provided. In fact, there 

 was scarcely anything in English in the 

 nature of a general treatise. The nearest 

 approach I can recall was a brief chapter 

 on diseases caused by fungi in Berkeley's 

 'Outlines of British Fungology ' (1860), 

 and a little book by M. C. Cook entitled 

 'Rust, Smut, Mildew and Mould' (1865). 

 A Iniowledge of foreign languages was 

 even more essential in that day than it is 

 now for the study of diseases of plants. 



Even in European tongues there were com- 

 paratively few useful general works on 

 diseases of plants. We had, it is true, the 

 rare, largely neglected, and generally 

 negligible, crude, early works of Re, Unger, 

 Meyen, Hamel and Hallier. There was 

 also the first edition of Sorauer 's ' Pflan- 

 zenkrankheiten ' (1874), and Winter's lit- 

 tle book of a dozen chapters, which ap- 

 peared in 1878. This book, which described 

 some of the commonest diseases of plants, 

 is now quaint and old-fashioned reading, 

 but it then seemed a model in its way. In 

 1878 there also appeared a little book by 

 de Jubainville and Vesque on 'Les Mala- 

 dies des plantes cultivees, des arbres 

 fruitiers et forestiers, produites par le sol, — 

 r'atmosphere,— les parasites vegetaux, etc., 

 d'apres les travaux de Tulasne, de Bary, 

 Berkeley, Hartig, Sorauer, etc' There 

 was also an earlier and very good book for 

 its time by Kiihn (1858). 



A few diseases had been worked up quite 

 carefully as to their etiology, and in the 

 doing of this the way was blazed for the 

 critical study of other and different dis- 

 eases, and also, of course, for a great deal 

 of inference and uncertain speculation. I 

 refer to de Bary's classical work on the 

 potato rot fungus {Phytophthora infes- 

 tans), Farlow's work on the mildew of the 

 grape (Peronospora infestans) and the 

 black knot of the plum and cherry {Plow- 

 rightia morbosa), Woronin's work on the 

 club root of the cabbage (Plasmodiophora 

 irassicce), de Bary's discoveries with refer- 

 ence to the heterocism of the grain rust 

 {Puccinia grayninis), Cornu's studies of 

 the Phylloxera of the vine, Fischer von 

 Waldheim's studies of certain of the grain 

 smuts, and similar papers. The rusts and 

 smuts, and the downy and powdery mil- 

 dews, were the best-known parasites. Cer- 

 tain fungi then supposed to be pure sapro- 

 phytes are now known to be active para- 

 sites, e. g., certain members of the form- 



