November, 1911.] 



427 



Plant Sanitation. 



strips, and the product, bejuco, is used 

 in a great many ways by the natives. 

 It is very tough and serves as a sub- 

 stitute for various forms of cane in the 

 manufacture of furniture, in the place 

 of nails for binding together the timbers 

 of houses, and for fastening the timbers 

 of bridges and other forms of construc- 



tion. It also takes the place of rope 

 and twine in all of the uses to which 

 those articles are put. 



There is an abundance available and 

 it can be gathered at small cost. It 

 is a product that will in time develop a 

 great value for export, as well as con- 

 tinuing in general use by the Filipinos. 



PLANT SANITATION. 



MYCOLOGY IN RELATION TO 

 ADMINISTRATION. 



(From the Louisiana Planter and Sugar 

 Manufacturer. Vol. XL VII., No. 4, 

 22, 1911.) 



The systematic study of the disease of 

 plants and its application to general 

 agriculture has developed almost entirely 

 within the last sixty years. Although 

 the existence of various fungi has been 

 recognized for many centuries, yet little 

 if anything was known of their real 

 nature until the middle of last century. 

 Their life histories were almost entirely 

 unstudied, and many of them were be- 

 lieved to be abnormal developments of 

 the leaves and other parts of flowering 

 plants. Under such circumstances it 

 was only natural that nothing should 

 be known of their connection with 

 plant diseases, and the latter were 

 generally attributed to bad soil con- 

 ditions, the occurrence of excessive rains 

 or drought, and similar factors. In some 

 instances, where large insects, such as 

 the larvae of beetles, or of moths and 

 butterflies, were found in considerable 

 numbers in connection with disease, it 

 was realised that these were the cause, 

 while in others, when the disease was of 

 a violently epidemic nature, it was 

 usually said that the plants were 

 destroyed by a blight. Instances of this 

 are the blights reported at various times 

 on cacao in Trinidad, and they are said 

 to have destroyed the coco-nut palm in 

 Antigua. The use of the term " blight," 

 referring as it does only to the general 

 appearance of the affected plants, shows 

 clearly the complete lack of' information 

 that existed among planters and farmers 

 as to the real cause of the appearance. 

 This lack of information continued even 

 up to very recent times ; while the 

 confusion between insects and fungi, 

 which occurred among eminent scientific 

 men as late as the forties of the last 

 century, may be found among planters 

 at the present day. There is, however, 

 much excuse for this, as no means were 

 in existence until comparatively very 



recent years, for rendering available to 

 the practical man, to whom it was of so 

 much importance, the information that 

 was being rapidly accumulated by 

 scientific investigators. 



The real recognition of the important 

 part played by fungi in connection with 

 plant disease dates from the publication 

 in 1866 of De Bary's book on the com- 

 parative morphology and physiology of 

 the fuugi, in which details of life-history 

 and parasitism in the case of many forms 

 are clearly set forth. This gave a great 

 stimulus to many investigators, so that 

 during the subsequent thirty years an 

 immense mass of information was accu- 

 mulated both in connection with the 

 life-histories and pathological import- 

 ance of many species, and with their 

 systematic classification and the nature 

 of their reproductive arrangements. It 

 should, however, be borne in mind that 

 practically the whole of the work was 

 carried out by private individuals, either 

 working in their own laboratories or 

 in these of various universities and 

 academic institutions throughout the 

 world. As a consequence of this, the 

 information obtained was only available 

 through the medium of the more 

 advanced teaching establishments or of 

 the universities, to those engaged in the 

 study of Natural Science, and its im- 

 portance from a much wider agricultural 

 point of view was not fully recognized. 

 Along with this development in the 

 knowledge of their parasites went a 

 very rapid increase in the understanding 

 of the nature of plants themselves, so 

 that by about the year 1880 there was 

 accumulated large stores of knowledge 

 available for the right direction of a 

 campaign against plant diseases. 



Once the information had been 

 obtained, the next step from the agri- 

 cultural standpoint was to render it 

 useful to the planting community. This 

 was done by the recognition by Govern- 

 ments of the importance of the work 

 that could be performed. In England 

 such recognition consisted for a, 

 long time of the employment of e% 



