606 



SCIENCE. 



LN. S. Vol. XV. No. 381. 



conditions. Who will be the first to enter 

 the field with something really excellent? 

 Surely we ought to expect something 

 rather better than the books I have named. 

 A special exhortation to do well is hereby 

 extended to the first man to occupy the 

 field, since, if he sets the standard high, 

 all the others must rise to his level, and the 

 general gain will be great. 



As an illustration of the growth in the 

 United States of this branch of science, I 

 may be permitted to cite the fact that 

 when the speaker entered the United States 

 Department of Agriculture at Washington 

 in 1886, this line of work had only recently 

 been separated from the ordinary botanic- 

 al work of the department, which then 

 consisted principally of answers to cor- 

 respondents, and species descriptions of 

 grasses. At that period, and for some time 

 to come, we had no laboratory facilities 

 and scarcely any place we could call our 

 own. A little cubbyhole was apportioned 

 off for the chief. Professor Scribner, and 

 his assistant was allowed, by courtesy of 

 Dr. Marx, the department artist, to occupy 

 a desk in his room. We had very few 

 books, and nothing in the way of apparatus 

 beyond the simplest sort of microscopes. 

 Now, under direction of this same United 

 States Department of Agriculture, we have 

 several more or less well-equipped labora- 

 tories in Washington, one in California, 

 one in Florida and one in the Middle West 

 at St. Louis. The number of men em- 

 ployed, including those who are working 

 with us in the closely related and fre- 

 quently overlapping fields of plant physi- 

 ology and plant breeding, and exclusive of 

 clerks, typewriters, artists and laborers, is 

 twenty-six. The amount of money appro- 

 priated by Congress for this line of work 

 in 1887 was $5,000 ; the sum named as nec- 

 essary in the estimates of the Secretary of 

 Agriculture for the coming year is $118,- 

 000. 



As to places for the study of plant dis- 

 eases, we now have in this country about 

 fifty experiment stations where such dis- 

 eases are studied or may be studied, and 

 perhaps half as many colleges and univer- 

 sities, where more or less attention is given 

 to the subject. No great university has 

 yet done itself the honor to establish a 

 distinct chair of plant pathology, but the 

 subject is such a large and important one 

 that this must unquestionably follow within 

 a few years. More attention should, I 

 think, be given to the proper teaching of 

 this subject in colleges and imiversities. 

 While perhaps the study of plant diseases 

 has had a larger development in this coun- 

 try than anywhere abroad, owing to the 

 fostering cai'e of the National Government, 

 there are nevertheless many places in other 

 parts of the world where such diseases are 

 now studied. I might mention the dozen 

 or more experiment stations in Italy, in 

 nearly all of which something has been 

 done on this subject; the numerous places 

 in Germany, in universities and agricul- 

 tural colleges, and now recently in the 

 laboratory of the Imperial Government' 

 Board of Health, under the able leadership 

 of Dr. von Tubeuf ; similar places are now 

 provided in France, England, Russia, The 

 Netherlands, Sweden and other European 

 countries, for the study of plant diseases. 

 There is also considerable activity in 

 Japan, in Australia, in Java and in vari- 

 ous other parts of the world. 



The result of this is that a large body 

 of young men has undertaken the study 

 of this class of diseases, and the literature 

 of the subject is now extensive. It is also, 

 unfortunately, so scattered through jour- 

 nals, transactions, agricultural papers, etc., 

 that one must read very widely if he would 

 undertake to keep pace Avith the advances 

 which are being made. This, of course, has 

 its great disadvantages, and one sometimes 

 wishes that the Latin tongue had been 



