June IS, 189S. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
471 
I HAYE long been a reader of the Journal of Horticulture, and 
being greatly interested in Tomatoes, I always read every¬ 
thing I see in any way connected with their culture, hut I have 
not seen any mention made in your columns of a disease—if 
disease it is — that is very prevalent among Tomatoes in this 
locality. Before coming to this place, nineteen months ago, I 
never saw a plant affected by it, but during last summer and 
again within the past two months I have lost several plants, and 
seen probably hundreds in different gardens, besides hearing of 
others in various places I have not visited. 
The plants die suddenly, sometimes entirely collapsing in a 
few hours, at other times it is several days after the lower leaves 
droop before the plants die. I grow them in pots, and planted 
out in a house facing east, another west, another nearly north, and 
a span-roofed house facing east and west, where they get the sun 
from its rise to its setting, and in every house, in pots and planted 
out, I have lost a few plants. One friend has told me it is caused 
by too much water, while another says they have not had enough. 
But against this I should say I have tried to kill certain plants by 
watering considerably oftener than required, and others I have 
kept dry, letting them go without water for days together, but 
could not succeed in killing one by either method. 
I have had seed each year from a man who has never been 
troubled with the plants dying thus. They die in all stages of 
their growth, from small plants a foot high (rarely before they 
attain that height) to plants 6 to 8 feet high, with a full crop of 
fruit. 
1 hope my letter will be the means of bringing forward some 
interesting communications respecting Tomatoes and the diseases 
of which their stems, leaves, roots, and fruits are susceptible.— 
Chakles Lock, Bristol. _ 
I SEND a Tomato plant, and the roots of another. Several 
amongst my crop have gone off in the same way. The leaves 
flag and then wither, some plants die entirely, others shoot out 
again round the bottom. 1 send also several blooms which have 
dried and fallen from other plants in good health. The 
Tomatoes are grown in houses heated to about 60° at nighty 
higher in the day, always a little air at night, and plenty during 
the day. Occasionally on extra cold nights the thermometer has 
fallen to 65° and even 50°. An answer in the Journal of Horticulture 
will oblige.—X. Y. Z. 
[As Mr. G. Abbey is devoting special attention to diseases of 
plants that are more or less obscure in their origin and action, 
we sent him the specimens referred to for a searching microscopic 
examination. The following is his report thereon ;— 
“ The specimens have been carefully examined. They are not 
infested with fungi nor attacked by eelworms, but swarm with 
bacteria. The root-part of one plant was completely dead, every 
portion of the stem and the root tissues being entirely decayed and 
taken possession of by fungi, which generally accompany decay, 
and are only found on dead—never on living—vegetable matter. 
The other plant was alive—that is, its tissues were full of sap 
except the root portion, this being more or less dried, and the whole 
thoroughly infested with the spores of a bacterium hitherto un¬ 
named, but which as it was first discovered by the eminent American 
No. 677.—VoL. XXVI., Third Series. 
scientist. Dr. Byron Halsted (• Bacteria of the Melons,’ Botanical 
Gazette, November, 1891), I shall refer to as B. Halstedi. We 
may say that the disease is equally fatal to Gourds, Squashes, 
Vegetable Marrows, also Cucumbers or Melons, and it is the same 
that attacks Tomatoes. The attack is marked by a decay of the 
stem in proximity to the root, and then the whole plant collapses 
suddenly—sometimes in a few hours. This, however, is not always 
the case, for occasionally one or more leaves will turn a sickly 
yellow and the plants die slowly. In many cases the fruit does 
not exhibit more signs of disease than a few yellowish specks. 
“ The root portion of the plant examined consisted of tissues 
teeming with bacteria, the whole being destroyed and incapable of 
transmitting sap, consequently the leaves fell, and the stem would 
of course fail in due time. A transverse section through the 
stem on the seemingly live part revealed a discoloured band 
immediately below the bark, entirely extending around the inner 
woody portion and pith, and the watery tissue contained a multi¬ 
tudinous host of bacteria. Making a transverse section through 
the petiole of the leaf, innumerable bacteria were found. Then 
a transverse section of the fruit disclosed one side discoloured, 
and the other proved to be so under the microscope, but there 
was a difference ; 1, The discoloured side contained only one 
kind of bacteria—the same malignant form as found in the stem 
and petiole of the leaf ; 2, the side of a normal colour teemed 
with bacteria of a globular form, and there was not 10 per cent, 
of the other form, which is roundish oval, interspersed. 
“A drop of juice taken from the stem contained spores much 
smal'er than the active bacterial form in countless numbers. 
Another drop from the petiole of the leaf also teemed with 
bacteria, and a drop of juice from the discoloured portion of the 
fruit swarmed with the animalculge of the malignant order, and 
about 3 per cent, of the globular. One of the latter forms had 
become oval; attached to its outer surface were some small oval 
bodies, and they manifestly were eating it. A drop of juice 
from the seemingly half-and-half mixture of fluids between the 
discoloured and normal portion of the fruit contained about an 
equal proportion of the perfectly round and the much smaller 
oval bodies, but the globular bodies were far more minute than 
in juice from healthy tissues; yet one of the full-sized globular 
bodies had within its central orifice four full-sized and three half- 
grown oval-shaped bodies, and they were already causing the 
globular body to assume a pointed oval form. A drop of juice 
also from the apparently healthy portion of the fruit contained 
at least 87 per cent, of the globular bodies, and the 13 per cent, 
of oval bodies interspersed with them were much smaller than 
those in the diseased tissues, and so far as we could determine 
inert. 
“ Now, the perfectly globular bodies with a transparent centre 
or hole through them are found in all pure water, more abundantly 
in winter than in summer, from wells and springs, they being 
scarce in summer in those waters, and are never found in impure 
water, dirty pools, and polluted streams. They increase from the 
centre, throw out a bud, and a perfect globular body launches 
forth in less than twenty minutes on its errand of health to man 
and beast and plants, for they love pure water—that of the clouds. 
Any kind of water will not do for plants, and it is possible that 
the malignant bacterial spores may be introduced with impure 
water, especially liquid manure. 
“ The other body—Bacterium Halstedi—also increases by division^ 
it is said in the centre ; but the roundish oval bodies certainly 
bud from the blunt end of the oval, sometimes pushing two buds 
from near the crown, and not unfrequently from the small end. 
This goes on indefinitely, and the bodies occasionally lie in heaps 
and appear concatenate ; but they easily separate on the introduc¬ 
tion of a thinner fluid such as water, or upon sap passing through 
diseased and carrying them with the flow into healthy tissues. 
The foregoing is what the specimens revealed, and the results are 
No. 2333.—VoL. LXXXVIIL, Old Series. 
