The Florida agriculturist., 1908-02-01
HISTORY OF PLANT PATHOLOGY
A Paper Read Before the Athenaeum Club Gainesville
Fla, October 4, 1907, by H. S. Fawcett.


earth'' Later, King Lear asks Edgar:
plies, "How to prevent the fiend and
kill the vermin." Judging from this,
Edgar must have combined the Offices
of plant pathologist and entomologist
The Microscope.-The discovery OF
bacteria and the study into the nature
Of fungi were first made possible by
Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch lens grinder
who perfected the first simple micro
scope. AS early as 1915 he published an
article describing different forms OF
animalcules that he had found in we'll
water, decaying vegetation, infusions Of
hay, and the excreta of man and ami
mails. Nicholas Andry in 1901, classed
these organisms with the worms Lin
neus, the first great botanist, put them
in an order by themselves which he
called Chaos. In I762, almost one
hundred years afterwards, P1enciz, Of
Vienna, put forth his germ theory,
which among the guesses of the period,
happened to accord so accurately with
facts that it was later proven to be cor
rect in almost every detail Then fol-
lowed nearly one hundred years more
Of chance discovery and disconnected
The spontaneous gene
|ratiOn theory SO long maintained was
finally disproved in the early 3o's by
the Investigations of Tyndall and Of
Cohn.
Period Between 1850 and 1880.
Discoveries and Principles with
about 1850 a second period begins.
ALMOST two hundred years had passed
since the invention of the microscope,
land little had been learned except a
number of isolated facts Principles
were now needed as a basis for future
AS Professor Armby, Of
the Pennsylvania State College, said
recently Zone principle is worth a
thousand facts, because it includes them
all" The period between 1850 and 1880
lis one of rapid discovery and includes
the working out of principles which
prepared the way more fully for recent
work. The names of Pasteur Of
France, and De Barry of Germany, will
ever stand out prominently at the be-
ginning Of this period the former ior
his archaeological Investigations, and
the latter for his masterful work on the
fungi. 1t is gratifying to the investi
gator, as we'll as indicative Of the
change of thought of the people OF our
day, that at a recent vote Of the French
people, as to the greatest Frenchman-.
not a great military hero-who had
caused many thousands Of lives to be
lost, but an investigator whose dis
coverles had led to the saving Of many
times that number, Louis Pasteur, re
ceived the greatest number Of votes.
If | may presume to venture an opin-
ion in this connection, I believe that
the men Of the future to whom real
greatness is to be accorded. will be
those with the sincere spirit of research
and investigation in whatever depart
ment Of learning, who blaze out new
paths, establish principles, and really
do something in constructive way tc
advance the onward march of the race
toward its higher ideals,
De Barv.- While Pasteur was
demonstrating the relation of bacteria
to animal disease, De Barry was doing
equally masterful work in showing the
true relation of fungi to plant disease
De Barv's great book. "Comparative
MorDho1ogy and Physiology of Fungi"
published in 1866 cleared tip many dark
points in connection with this lower
iclass of plants. and proved clearly that
fungi were not only capable Of living
on dead organic matter, but could also
live in live tissue. and cause many
kinds of disease This, together with
the later work Of the systematic my
cologists, paved the way for the more
definite and practical work that was to