154 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [AUGUST 
in others to know them as he knew them, Professor BuRRILL should have 
turned for his own productive work from these conspicuous beings to 
the smaller ones that grow as parasites on them. He has passed into 
the history of science as the discoverer, in the fire blight of fruit trees, 
that plant diseases, like animal diseases, may sometimes be caused by 
bacteria. Though it has given place long since to a more approved 
method, he introduced to the science a method of demonstrating the 
bacteria of tuberculosis in affected tissues, and up to the day of his 
short final illness he was working hopefully on a large unsolved problem 
in applied bacteriology. 
My own contact with Professor BURRILL came over 30 years ago. 
I was working as a beginner on the parasitic fungi of Wisconsin; he, as 
a master, on those of Illinois. The correspondence was very helpful to 
me; it may have been helpful tohim. His publications, though rendered 
less essential today through being replaced by more comprehensive or 
more readily accessible works, had the intrinsic value of originality 
and carefulness, and, as has been said by a friend since his death, one 
felt that he was writing on a subject of which he was a master. 
It is only of late years that the University to which Professor BURRILL 
gave his life-energy has been stamping with its approval doctors majoring 
in his chosen field. To his inspiration, no doubt, the men who made 
pioneer mycological collections and studies in Illinois owe much: 
Seymour, Ear te, Warre, CLINTON, arid others. A colleague has told me 
recently that, speaking approvingly of sabbatical year and similar pro- 
visions for study away from home, Professor BuRRILL expressed his own 
sense of deprivation in never having been privileged to work in another 
man’s laboratory. What he accomplished was doubly commendable 
because he did his work as a pioneer, breaking as well as blazing the 
trail to his goal. 
ike most men of his type, Professor BURRILL Was quite as useful 
outside his chosen profession as within its limits. Horticulture claimed 
his aid and was never refused. The “forestry”’ park of the University 
of Illinois is an enduring demonstration of his contention, long before the 
word ecology had been coined, that trees could be grown successfully on 
the prairie if the prairie sod was effectively broken up. The campus was - 
planted by him, and he lived to see his saplings become large trees. 
Such a man could not escape administrative responsibilities. For most 
of his life he was Vice-President of the University; it was he to whom 
the trustees turned whenever an interregnum occurred, and his lasting 
affection for his chosen profession, and not their lack of appreciation of 
