COLLEGE WORK IN PATHOLOGY 



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PURPOSE OF THE COURSE 



If one should take the course in plant pathology as given by 

 the best institutions, what field of usefulness or employment lies 

 before the student on graduation? A graduate with a half-year's 

 course (senior year) in selected examples of diseases should be able 

 to materially reduce the injury done by the common diseases 

 on the farm, such as early blight and scab of potato ; rot and leaf 

 curl of peach; smuts in the cereals; or fire blight in the orchard. 



The untrained plant grower does not recognize the presence of 

 disease until leaves, fruits, or whole plants are actually dying. 

 The invading fungus has by then frequently completed its life in 

 the host tissues, and scattered the spores by which it may spread 

 to new individuals. This could have been checked or prevented 

 had the diseased condition been recognized by the plant grower 

 earlier, and the infested parts removed before the fungus reached 

 maturity. To one familiar with a number of typical diseases, 

 the evidence is seen at an earlier stage than it is apparent to others, 

 and hence a more prompt check to the damage is possible. 



The graduate of a college of agriculture should have received the 

 training needed to gain this end. From this a simple step could 

 make a demonstrator of the successful graduate in agriculture, 

 and thus greatly increase his field of activity, and his value to the 

 community. In such work there would be an incentive to keep 

 in touch with the advances and discoveries in the fight against 

 disease. It might be that a few students would wish to become 

 experts in plant pathology — and these might have positions in 

 view as teachers or as scientific employees in the State Depart- 

 ments of Agriculture, in the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture, or in the colleges and experiment stations. To reach 

 these wider fields post-graduate work would be needed, and fa- 

 miharity with French and German is often a requirement. This 

 professional training need not concern us, however, as this is the 

 work of universities, rather than of colleges. 



