184 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



0 



"At the present time the disease still flourishes in the very same 

 garden in which it ivas observed in 1900. 



" Let us remember that the danger in connection with this disease 

 which now confronts European gooseberry- growers is no problematical 

 one. The disease has proved year after year in the United States, and in 

 Europe every year since its introduction, to be a most devastating one. 

 In my previous articles, the extracts I have given from a number of 

 Bulletins of various American Agricultural Experiment Stations, also from 

 the reports of the Commissioners of Agriculture, show that the mildew 

 is the one great enemy of the gooseberry in the United States. In . the 

 ' Year-book of the Department of Agriculture ' (United States) for 1899, 

 in an article on ' Progress of Plant-breeding,' an account is given of how 

 the American gooseberry-growers were forced to give up the cultivation 

 of the European gooseberry on account of its susceptibility to mildew, 

 and have had to depend upon raising improved strains of native American 

 species, which are much less susceptible to the disease. 



" We shall obtain no clear view as to what could be effected by 

 legislation if we confuse together diseases which are practically cosmo- 

 politan with those which appear first as epidemic diseases confined to 

 definite areas. It is the stamping out of diseases of the latter class, and 

 the prevention of their introduction or re-introduction, which lie within 

 the province of legislation. 



" In conclusion, with reference again to the question of dealing with 

 the American gooseberry-mildew — at the present moment a vital and 

 pressing question — I cannot help expressing my regret that statements 

 calculated to dissuade the Authorities from employing legislative measures 

 to stamp out this disease should have been published. It is the more 

 regrettable since at the present time there is a movement on the 

 Continent to establish an International Bureau of Plant Pathology, in 

 connection with an International Institute of Agriculture.* If our 

 Government will support this movement, we may hope that at length the 

 question of legislation and the control of plant diseases will receive the 

 careful and scientific attention it has received in other countries." 



An eminent mycologist has said that " there is not a scrap of direct 

 evidence " on the introduction of the gooseberry-mildew into Ireland. 

 But I would repeat what I distinctly stated in the " Gardeners' Chronicle," 

 that I had received information from a private source that " it has been 

 ascertained that the mildew has been introduced into Ireland by diseased 

 stock imported into nurseries from America." The same authority has 

 written : " It is directly opposed to common experience, also to careful 

 investigation, to conclude that diseased plants are sent out by nursery- 

 men." The incorrectness of this general statement is now evident from the 

 information supplied by Professor J. Eriksson's article on the American 

 gooseberry-mildew on p. 138 in the present volume of this Journal, 

 where we learn that the disease has been brought to Sweden on plants 

 supplied from a certain nursery at Korsor in Denmark. f In numerous 



* See my article in Gard. CJiron., October 1905 ; also Fortnightly ReHeiv for 

 November 1905. 



f Y\ T e find the following in Eriksson's recent article (12, p. 137) : " Professor Kostrup 

 wrote to me : ' In all the Danish localities, as well as in the Norwegian one, the disease 



