12 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL,III. No. 1097 



of good work that has been done. If the 

 American botanist leads in any kind of in- 

 vestigation, it certainly is in the study and 

 treatment of plant diseases. One of the 

 earliest lines of work was listing the species 

 of fungi that were found in the different 

 states, such lists, often descriptive, being 

 published by Burrill for Illinois, Atkinson 

 and Earle for Alabama, Tracy and Earle 

 for Mississippi, Williams for South Da- 

 kota, Jennings for Texas, and Jones and 

 Orton for Vermont. 



Many botanists have made similar sur- 

 veys for the destructive fungi of their eco- 

 nomic plants, as Halsted for New Jersey, 

 Pammel for Iowa, Selby for Ohio and Stew- 

 art for New York. Sturgis, and Stevens 

 with his students, have been concerned 

 with the literature of plant diseases; and 

 Atkinson, Duggar, Freeman and Stevens 

 have published books dealing with fungi. 

 Farlow, Atkinson, Duggar, and some others 

 have contributed data concerning edible 

 and poisonous mushrooms. Von Schrenk, 

 Hedgcoek, Spaulding, Metcalf, Heald, 

 Graves and Long have made studies of the 

 diseases of trees and the decay of timber. 

 Thaxter, Rolfs, Faweett and Speare have 

 been interested in the fungous diseases of 

 injurious insects. 



Determination of the alternate stages of 

 fungi has been an entrancing study for those 

 engaged in it, and special mention should 

 be made of such work with the rusts by 

 Arthur, Kern, Olive and others of Arthur 's 

 students. Artificial culture of fungi com- 

 menced with the early work of Thaxter and 

 Atkinson, and now plays an important 

 part in all myeological investigations, those 

 of Shear, Heald and Edgerton well illus- 

 trating this type of work. 



Disease resistance to specific fungi has 

 received attention from Orton, with cotton 

 and watermelons, Carleton and Freeman 

 with cereals, Bolley with wheat and fiax. 



Stuart with potatoes, Norton with aspara- 

 gus, and Blinn with muskmelons. 



In addition to the preceding, many 

 studies have been made of physical injuries 

 and so-called physiological diseases of 

 plants. Prominent among such studies are 

 those of Smith with peach yellows and ro- 

 sette, Atkinson with edema troubles, and 

 "Woods, Allard and Chapman with calico 

 of tobacco. Stone has contributed to our 

 knowledge of injury by electricity; Stur- 

 gis, Bain and many others, of spray injury. 

 Winter injury has received especial atten- 

 tion from Waite, Selby, Grossenbacher, 

 Morse and others. 



One of the most practical lines of work 

 has been the so-called ' ' sqiiirt-gun botany, ' ' 

 which deals with the treatment of plant 

 diseases by spraying. Among the early 

 investigators working along this line should 

 be mentioned Goff with apple scale, Lam- 

 son-Scribner with grape rots, Thaxter with 

 quince leaf -blight, Jones with potato blight, 

 Chester with brown rot of peach, Lodeman 

 with fruit diseases, and Galloway, Halsted, 

 Stewart and Selby with a great variety of 

 diseases. 



As Bordeaux mixture is one of the oldest 

 and most frequently used of the fungicides, 

 it has received especial attention as to its 

 composition, action, etc., in articles by 

 Chester, Fairchild, Crandall and Lutman. 

 In recent years lime-sulphur, borrowed 

 from the entomologists, and first used as a 

 fungicide in the west by Pierce and others, 

 has been brought into prominence in the 

 east by the work of Scott of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, and by various sta- 

 tion botanists. The development of the 

 self-boiled lime-sulphur by Scott is a still 

 more recent factor in spraying. 



Hot water treatment for smuts of grain 

 first received attention in this couatry from 

 Kellerman and Swingle, while Bolley and 

 later Arthur brought forth formalin for 



