Januabt 7, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



the Department of Agriculture; or if he 

 merely takes minor work in botany, and 

 specializes in some other line of agriculture, 

 there are open the countless positions in 

 these allied branches, including those of the 

 newly established Farm Bureau work. 



Department of Agriculture Botany. — 

 Turning now from the botany in our agri- 

 cultural colleges to that in the U. S. De- 

 partment of Agriculture, what can we say 

 of its development and influence? It ap- 

 parently had its beginnings in the Patent 

 Office Reports and the plant collections that 

 were deposited with the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution from time to time, chiefly by the va- 

 rious governmental exploring expeditions 

 in the far west. As a distinct division, it 

 was established soon after the completion 

 of the department building in 1868, when 

 it was found necessary to have a botanist to 

 complete the working force, which at that 

 time included among others a chemist and 

 an entomologist. 



C. C. Parry was apparently the first bot- 

 anist, and he wrote in his report for 1869 

 as follows : 



In entering upon the duties of botanist to the 

 Department of Agriculture in March, 1869, my first 

 care was directed to the arrangement of the large 

 and valuable collections of dried plants received 

 from the Smithsonian Institute. 



In April, 1872, George Vasey became the 

 botanist, and, like Parry, his time at first 

 was largely taken up with herbarium duties. 

 Vasey, however, soon began to publish ar- 

 ticles dealing -ndth flowering plants, partly 

 from a systematic point of view, though 

 economic studies of the grasses, of weeds, 

 and of medicinal and poisonous plants were 

 also made. 



Although as early as 1871 Thomas Tay- 

 lor, the mieroscopist of the department, had 

 written articles concerning various diseases 

 of plants caused by fungi, and even such 

 obscure troubles as peach yellows, it was 



not until 1886 that the Division of Botany 

 established a distinct mycological section, 

 with F. Lamson-Scribner in charge. The 

 character of his report for this year fore- 

 casted the important place that this sub- 

 ject was to occupy in the future develop- 

 ment of the department. That this new 

 work met with the hearty approval of the 

 country was shown by resolutions adopted 

 by various societies and sent to the com- 

 missioner of agriculture, among which was 

 one by the Botanical Club of America. 



In 1888 B. T. Galloway was appointed 

 chief of the Section of Vegetable Pathology 

 and Physiology, and, with A. F. Woods as 

 assistant, was intimately connected with its 

 subsequent development. One of the most 

 important of the results of the Galloway 

 regime was the reorganizing in 1901 of aU 

 the divisions of the department dealing with 

 plant life, save forestry alone, under the 

 new Bureau of Plant Industry. These 

 united divisions were those of botany, pa- 

 thology and physiology, agronomy, pomology 

 and the experiment gardens and grounds, 

 and with these were later included the Ar- 

 lington Experiment Farm and some other 

 lines of work. So far as the writer knows, 

 the Department of Agriculture is the only 

 institution in the United States that has 

 recognized botany in its broadest meaning, 

 and kept under its wing all the practical 

 branches that elsewhere assume entire in- 

 dependence, or even include botany as a 

 part of their development. 



To-day the Bureau of Plant Industry has 

 on its staff over 400 investigators doing 

 work in the 32 groups which are under its 

 control. These groups include such varied 

 investigations as fruit diseases, forest pa- 

 thology, cotton and truck diseases, crop phys- 

 iology, soil bacteriology, soil fertility, drugs 

 and poisonous plants, grain standardiza- 

 tion, cereals, corn, tobacco, agricultural 

 technology, fiber plants, seed testing, forage 



