June, 1921] 
STEVENS — PLANT PATHOLOGY 
321 
take a short point of view and not only to do work which will give immediate 
results but to produce these results very early. Awful examples can be 
quoted." He says also that "under compulsion of justification there is 
much danger that the rest of the work is forced to conform to the initial 
misconception." Without in any way belittling the progress that is being 
made through the large volume of work of high quality that is done under 
the present regime, I may add that similar quotations are available from 
American writings. 
Pathology is now become of such large scope that it is beginning to 
differentiate. It is now demanded that common diseases be diagnosed 
and treatments recommended, extension work done, surveys made, fungi- 
cides and spraying schedules tested, quarantine restrictions enforced, 
seeds certified as free of diseases, and similar other time-consuming duties 
attended to. Thus should, and does, arise a division of labor, giving the 
administration of these important fields to those adapted to them by 
ability and inclination and leaving the pathologist more nearly free to make 
his laboratory and field attack upon other problems. This freedom is 
already reacting favorably upon research in pathology and altering per- 
ceptibility the character of the output. But it is clearly apparent that the 
existing agencies and the motives engendered by pressure of present con- 
ditions will not lead to that full, broad, fundamental development that is 
needed. 
More adequate study of the fundamentals clearly means that pathology 
must come into closer cooperation with all other phases of botany and 
indeed with other sciences. Such cooperation that mycologists, bacte- 
riologists, physiologists, taxonomists, technicians, organic, physiological, 
and physical chemists, may together concentrate upon some worthy prob- 
lem, such, for example, as disease resistance, or the mosaics. This coopera- 
tion can perhaps best be brought about by the establishment of an institute, 
in such manner as to secure not only the desired cooperation but the freedom 
from time pressure that is needed. 
The very success of pathology is in itself a danger in that numerous 
positions successfully tempt the student to leave his training only partially 
completed, and, moreover, deplete the ranks of fundamental botany, taking 
from them those whose abilities and inclinations would otherwise assure 
their aid in fields kindred to pathology. 
A second movement that would tend much to relieve the deficiency would 
be one that would encourage the individual worker, accentuating a revival 
of that spirit which impelled Berkeley, the Tulasnes, de Bary, Brefeld, 
Farlow. It is in the universities and colleges that their successors will 
largely do their work. Our indebtedness to such isolated workers in the 
past is clearly recognized, and without their aid in the future we lose much. 
The necessary limitations of a project system would have precluded the 
great discoveries of the past, the results of the genius of Darwin and Pasteur, 
