AMERICAN 
JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
Vol. I ' March, 1914 No. 3 
PROBLEMS AND PROGRESS IN PLANT PATHOLOGY 
L. R. JONES^ 
L Introduction 
It may be assumed, I trust, that I am doing the expected thing in 
choosing the topic of this address from my own field, phytopathology. 
If, however, justification is asked, the answer is clear. Plant path- 
ology is simply a phase of botany. Practically all progress to date in 
its scientific development is owing to botanists. The rapid increase 
in numbers of those engaged upon work in this branch of botanical 
science has, however, naturally crystallized certain tendencies to 
segregation, giving us our independent Phytopathological Society 
with its separate program and its own journal. While this segre- 
gation is, in my judgment, the natural and wholesome result of 
progress, it creates problems and embodies danger to both parties. 
To the parent group, these lie in the loss of close association, hereto- 
fore had with some of its virile younger members; to the younger 
branch, there is the even more serious danger in passing from the 
critical and standardizing influence of the general Botanical Society 
dominated by maturer minds and broader ideals. 
If we accept as true the statement of one year ago by Dr. Farlow^ 
that America is today surpassing other nations in the study and appli- 
cations of plant pathology, perhaps the first phase of biological science 
where this can be asserted, all will agree that much credit for this is 
^ Address of the retiring President of the Botanical Society of America, read at 
the Atlanta meeting, Dec. 31, 1913. 
2 Farlow, W. G. The change from the old to the new botany in the United 
States. Science, N. S. 37: 79. 1913. 
[The Journal for February (i: 51-95) was issued 3 Ap 1914.] 
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