18 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN STUDIES 
that had been proposed were far too exacting, that what were 
being considered abnormal conditions in milk were really 
normal. The modern views of the significance of the cellular 
elements in milk were forecast in the papers published in 
1906 and 1907. 
Another field in which pioneer work was done was that 
of the relation of bacteria to diseases of plants. The views 
held by those highest in the field of plant pathology were that 
bacteria could not be of importance in the causation of disease 
in plants due to the acidity of the plant juice. It was known 
that bacteria as a group grow best in nutrient solutions that 
are alkaline to litmus. Plant juices are usually acid to litmus, 
therefore the inference was drawn that bacteria could not 
grow in the plant tissues. Again the structure of the plant 
did not seem to favor the entrance of bacteria or their spread 
in the tissues of the plant. The German investigators of 
1895 in bacteriology were not accustomed to pay much atten- 
tion to what had been done in America. One of the first 
bacteriological investigations in this country was that of Dr. 
T. J. Burrell of the University of Illinois on pear blight. 
This should at least have indicated to the bacteriologists the 
possibility of bacterial diseases of plants. 
The training which Dean Russell had received in botany 
and in connection with the preparation of his doctor’s thesis 
had given him an admirable preparation to undertake an 
investigation of a disease that was causing great havoc in 
the cabbage-growing sections of Wisconsin. In 1898 Bulletin 
65 of the Experiment Station was published. It was entitled 
A Bacterial Rot of Cabbage and Allied Plants. This work 
is to be classed as one of the first extensive pieces of research 
in a field that has assumed so great an importance. 
The period from 1893 to 1907 was crowded with work of 
instruction and research; the period from 1907 to 1917, with 
executive duties whose manifold demands have made im- 
possible any active continuance in the former lines of work. 
This condition is to be regretted, on the one hand, for it has 
robbed the students of the college of an inspiring instructor, 
ef whom there are few, and the world of an able research man, 
