FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
is not in accord with what actually occurs 
in the plant. 
The confirmation of this long suspected 
fact in the use of organic fertilizers would 
show there is a possibility of plants ab¬ 
sorbing so great a quantity of the poison¬ 
ous alkaloids of quickly decaying animal 
or other organic fertilizer's as to' derange 
the enzyme-producing functions and 
healthy growth of plants for it is a fact 
that the alkaloid's or toxins may produce a 
destructive breaking down of plant pro¬ 
toplasm that is as rapid in its way as the 
transformation by diastase of starch into 
glucose. As an analogy witness the study 
of the effects of the tetanus or lockjaw 
bacillus toxin by N. Tiberti (E. S. R. 
XVII, No. 8,804, April, 06.) In the 
author’s experiments it was found that in 
guinea pigs and rabbits the ischiatic nerve 
may absorb the tetanus toxin and trans¬ 
port it to the nerve centers when the tox¬ 
in is applied to the cut end of the nerve. 
When the tetanus toxin is injected into 
the muscle it spreads about and comes in 
contact with the nerve fibres by which it 
is absorbed. If tetanus anti-toxin is inject¬ 
ed into a nerve trunk and toxin injected 
later into the corresponding muscles, the 
anti-toxin will prevent the toxin from 
reaching the central nervous system. 
In this disease the germs, in the early 
stages at least, remain in the wound and 
the symptoms are caused by the digestive 
and waste poisons they produce in mul¬ 
tiplication and growth. The anti-toxins 
that are secured from the blood of animals 
that have been vaccinated or have recov¬ 
ered from infectious diseases do not 
act directly on the organism of other ani¬ 
mals or in a chemical sense, but their 
chief action is a partial neutralization of 
toxins. It has been shown that a mixture 
of a toxin and anti-toxin is not strictly 
neutral, and portions of both toxin and 
anti-toxin remain uncombined, while the 
remainder of the toxin and anti-toxin 
combines and becomes neutralized in 
varying degrees. 
When it comes to applying the princi¬ 
ples of the discoveries in the treatment of 
animal germ diseases tO' the diseases of 
plants we are all at sea for lack of suffi¬ 
cient investigation. That plants are at¬ 
tacked and suffer in a similar way to ani¬ 
mals from poison and diseases is a matter 
of common observation. When a soldier 
bug sucks a fast growing orange or other 
plant shoot and it quickly wilts we feel 
sure it has had the effects of a snake bite 
on an animal and is damaged by a similar 
alkaloid poison. I know common salt will 
defoliate an orange tree and that a hand¬ 
ful of arsenic or London purple will kill it. 
L. Montemartini (E. S. R. XVII, No. 
10,891. ’06.) Studying the physiology of 
diseased plants due to fungi and mites de¬ 
duced the hypothesis that the parasites 
may secrete some poisonous substances 
that stimulate the plant chiefly by increas¬ 
ed respiration during the early stages be¬ 
fore the depressing effects appear. 
The soft rot bacteria of vegetables ex¬ 
crete enzymes that break down the plant 
tissues in advance of the entrance of the 
germs and the same has been shown 
of fungi. 
S. A. Makrzhetski, (E. S. R. XVII. 
No. 10,959,) conducted a number of ex¬ 
periments in which he introduced arsenic, 
copper, sulphate, eosin and other poison¬ 
ous solutions into trees for the purpose of 
destroying parasites, but did not obtain 
any very satisfactory results. He then re- 
