January 7, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



11 



station workers, as Stone, Duggar and 

 Reed, have made investigations dealing with 

 special problems involving physiological 

 and chemical study. Through the coopera- 

 tion of the botanists with the chemists, the 

 general chemical composition of many 

 plants, especially grasses, has been deter- 

 mined. 



Plant breeding is one of the most recent 

 lines of work that has been taken up by 

 several of the stations. This in reality is 

 not so new as it may seem, for various hor- 

 ticulturists and agriculturists, as Sturte- 

 vant with corn, Munson with fruits, Mc- 

 Clure with sweet corn, and Hayes with 

 wheat, and such botanists as Halsted with 

 vegetables, Webber with citrous fruits, and 

 Carleton with cereals, had long been inter- 

 ested, as shown by their publications. Re- 

 cent work, however, has aroused new in- 

 terest, and we may merely mention in pas- 

 sing that of Smith, East, Shull and Hartley 

 with corn, Selby, Shamel, East and Hayes 

 with tobacco, Roberts with wheat, McLen- 

 don with cotton, Groth with vegetables, 

 Emerson and Belling with beans, "Webber 

 and Clark with timothy, Hansen with fruits, 

 and Love with oats. Some of these inves- 

 tigations have aimed to solve the laws that 

 underlie plant breeding, and others chiefly 

 to produce more valuable strains or in- 

 creased yields of the plants investigated. 



(2) Bacteria. — Coming to bacteriological 

 investigations, we find that, on the whole, 

 our botanists have not taken so prominent 

 a part in the work. This is because bac- 

 teriology as now constituted, though it deals 

 with plants, is considered a distinct science. 

 So, with the exception of teaching, in part, 

 and investigations of plant diseases, bac- 

 teriology has passed mostly outside the 

 realm of botany. In fact, as regards gen- 

 eral sanitation and the bacterial diseases of 

 man and animals, our botanists have never 

 done much work. Burrill has always been 



interested in these lines, and one of his stu- 

 dents, Briscoe, published bulletins on the 

 tubercle bacillus. Chester, like Burrill, did 

 a little work with animal diseases, and sev- 

 eral botanists have published popular ar- 

 ticles. 



Dairy bacteriology also has remained 

 largely a subject for specialists outside of 

 the botanical realm, though such biologists 

 as Conn, Russell and Marshal have done 

 good work. 



Soil bacteriology, however, has come a 

 little closer home, and has occupied the at- 

 tention of Chester, Kellerman, and a few 

 others, while Burrill, Schneider, Moore, 

 Kellerman, Duggar, Harding and Garman 

 have been interested in the question of the 

 bacteria of root tubercles on legumes. 



Coming to the work with plant diseases, 

 however, we find the botanists of this coun- 

 try have accomplished more in this line 

 than all the rest of the world. To start 

 with, Burrill was the first to prove that 

 bacteria cause disease in plants; and, in 

 the development of this line of work. Smith 

 of the Department of Agriculture has ac- 

 complished results that place his name high 

 among American botanists. 



Among the many who have published 

 articles dealing with special bacterial dis- 

 eases of plants may be mentioned those of 

 Burrill, Arthur, Waite, and Whetzel on 

 pear blight, of Thaxter, Bolley and Lut- 

 man, on potato scab, of Smith, Townsend, 

 Hedgcock, and C. 0. Smith on crown gall, 

 of Pammel and Smith on black rot of cru- 

 ciferous plants, of C. 0. Smith on walnut 

 blight, of Jones on bacillus of carrots, of 

 Stewart on the corn disease, of Stevens on 

 tobacco wilt, of Manns on the oat disease, 

 of Giddings on the rot of melons, and of 

 Johnson on the coconut bud rot. 



(3) Fungi, etc. — Taking up the last line 

 of investigations, those with the fungi, one 

 finds himself overwhelmed with the amount 



