SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1097 



crops, economic and systematic botany, 

 sugar beets, irrigation, horticulture and 

 pomology, seed and plant introduction, etc. 



One of the more recent duties of this Bu- 

 reau in connection with that of entomology 

 has been inspection work under the Federal 

 Horticultural Law passed in 1912. This 

 has to do with regulations, including quar- 

 antine, and inspections, to prevent the im- 

 portation of injurious insects and diseases 

 of foreign plants, and in certain eases, to 

 limit the further spreading of those already 

 here. Previous to this law such work had 

 been largely restricted to local state inspec- 

 tion, having had its origin in the effort of 

 certain states to limit the spread of the San 

 Jose scale. This work has been, and still 

 is, largely in the hands of the entomol- 

 ogists. 



While botanists got a late start here, they 

 seem to have been the chief factor in similar 

 work in Europe, so that when a world's 

 conference was recently called at Rome to 

 consider the subject, it was termed a Phy- 

 topathological Congress. This nomencla- 

 ture seems to have aroused certain Amer- 

 ican entomologists with fear that plant 

 pathologists were running away with what 

 they considered their special work. Howard 

 voiced this sentiment a year ago in a paper 

 before the entomologists, as follows: 



There is a tendency now to break into the soli- 

 darity of our branch of science and to unite us 

 with the plant disease people under the term phyto- 

 pathology in so far as insects affect plant life. 

 ... To combine them into one service would be 

 impracticable except as work of a large agricul- 

 tural institution. To combine them under one 

 name in a branch of agricultural science is absurd ! 



Personally the writer believes this work 

 is more botanical than entomological, since 

 the hosts are plants and the pests also in 

 part. However, the work is largely routine 

 and semi-political, involving the passage of 

 inspection laws and the asking for appro- 

 priations, and so is somewhat on a par with 



the fertilizer work of our chemical friends. 

 Why not then allow the entomologists still 

 to dominate in this work in America, as 

 they seem eminently fitted for it, and thus 

 allay their fears of being absorbed by the 

 plant pathologists? 



Experiment Station Botany. — Let us now 

 consider briefly the third factor in our re- 

 cent botanical development, namely, exper- 

 iment station botany. In a sense this is 

 Department of Agriculture botany locally 

 applied. However, the station botanist is 

 usually working on various botanical prob- 

 lems, while the government botanist is put- 

 ting his whole time on a few allied prob- 

 lems. This becomes increasingly so as time 

 goes on; therefore one may expect the 

 station worker to be a somewhat broader 

 botanist, and the government investigator 

 more of a specialist. On the other hand, 

 the latter often has a wide but limited 

 knowledge of his problem over the whole 

 country, while the former has a detailed 

 and continuous experience in a limited re- 

 gion. Together these two types of investi- 

 gators are able to furnish admirable solu- 

 tions to most botanical problems. 



To Arthur, apparently, belongs the honor 

 of being the first station botanist, as he 

 was botanist at the Geneva station in 1884, 

 when he published, among other studies, his 

 paper on pear blight; however, in 1883 

 Maynard, professor of botany and horti- 

 culture at the Massachusetts College, was 

 head of the horticultural department of the 

 Massachusetts station, and published some 

 notes on plant diseases that year. 



Most of the states, upon the establish- 

 ment of their stations, merely employed the 

 professor of botany already at work in the 

 college, and we have mentioned the names 

 of several. Others established botanical 

 departments for the first time, or placed 

 them on a more substantial footing, and to 

 these there came sooner or later such men 



