738 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 384. 



partment of Agi-ieulture, no longer leaves 

 this position tenable. The writer has some- 

 times wondered whether we have in this 

 tardiness to apply botany in vegetable 

 pathology a sort of unwillingness or reluc- 

 tance to place applied science upon a co- 

 ordinate basis with pure science. Many are 

 aware how relentless was the opposition of 

 the representatives of the old education to 

 putting engineering or applied science 

 ■courses upon the same basis as the arts 

 ■course for graduation. Indeed, if I am 

 not mistaken, certain institutions still dis- 

 criminate against graduates in engineering. 

 ■.Seeing that all this is history, and noting 

 that applied science in the domain of living 

 things offers great difficulties by reason 

 of the variations in the organisms them- 

 selves than the sciences applied in engineer- 

 ing and other teclmological lines, it ought 

 not to surprise us that this applied botany 

 should make at times slow advances. Such 

 lias been the case all along the line of 

 agricultural application. It would not be 

 against some things that have already 

 passed into history were the lingering, or 

 inherent hostility to useful knowledge as a 

 part of the subject matter of collegiate 

 instruction to have had something to do 

 with the tardy recognition given to plant 

 pathology in this, the foremost country of 

 the earth, in the application of the reme- 

 dial methods its study has brought to our 

 people. A good many of us have heard 

 the sneer often accorded to really fine 

 work in applied botany. 



However much weight we may give the 

 foregoing considerations, it must not be 

 denied that vegetable pathology as a well- 

 rounded division of botany has been com- 

 pelled to pass severe tests, to suffer dis- 

 advantages. 



The tendency in some quarters to re- 

 strict the application of the term vegetable 

 pathology to a study of the cryptogamie 

 parasites upon plants has been a great 



drawback. Parasitology has been devel- 

 oi^ed to the narrowing and dwarfing of the 

 true science. Doubtless this is the idea 

 which finds expression in the catalogued 

 courses of ' economic mycology. ' One well- 

 known and liberal-minded botanist, himself 

 a professor of botany, made the remark to 

 me some two years ago that he would ac- 

 knowledge that we possessed a science of 

 plant parasitology, but that the science of 

 plant pathology seemed to him to require 

 building up on the non-parasitic side be- 

 fore we could consider it a well-developed 

 division of the science of botany. I may 

 mention here in passing that the develop- 

 ment in this country of economic entomol- 

 ogy, apart from botany, wherein its appli- 

 cation rests if it attain economic rank as 

 to plants, has also divided forces when 

 compared with the course of events in Ger- 

 many and the remainder of Continental 

 Europe. 



Granting that the immediate demands 

 for it and the recognized value of the re- 

 sults of the study of fungus parasites have 

 developed the science unequally or dis- 

 proportionately in that direction, recent 

 advances have certainly tended in a large 

 measiire to correct this tendency. While 

 we do not yet know the exact interrelations 

 out of which harm results from the unlock- 

 ing of oxidizing enzyms at unpropitious 

 times, as is now believed to be true in yel- 

 lows of the peach and in the mosaic disease 

 of herbaceous plants, notably of tobacco, 

 progress towards a knowledge of this ab- 

 normal ' stoff wechsel ' has certainly been 

 rapid and has apparently proceeded along 

 safe lines. That many normal processes 

 in plants remain obscure or unsolved does 

 not discourage the plant physiologist; no 

 more should the obscurity of the abnormal 

 deviations cause the plant pathologist to 

 desist from his triumphant progress. 



A prominent plant physiologist has re- 

 cently asserted that an adequate explana- 



