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No. 146.

MINUTES OF THE SECOND GENERAL MEETING OF THE MANAGING COMMITTEE OF THE IMPERIAL BUREAU OF MYCOLOGY, held at THE COLONIAL OFFICE ON THE 14th of May, 1920, at 3 p.m.

Present:

VISCOUNT HARCOURT (Chairman). PROFESSOR BAYLEY BALFOUR.

PROFESSOR BLACKMAN.

MR. COTTON.

PROFESSOR DIXON.

CAPTAIN Arthur Hill.

PROFESSOR LANG.

SIR DANIEL MORRIS.

MR. MURRAY.

SIR A. E. SHIPLEY.

SIR HERBERT READ.

MR. BECKETT (Secretary).

THE Committee discussed and adopted unanimously the recommendations of the Sub-Committee for the appointment of a Director, viz. :—

(1) "That this Sub-Committee recommends to the Committee of Management to advise the Secretary of State to concur in the terms recommended by the Government of India and approved by the Secretary of State for India. viz. that the services of Dr. Butler, as Director of the Imperial Bureau of Mycology, be accepted for a period of three years, during which Dr. Butler will be seconded by the Government of India, the Imperial Bureau, through the Colonial Office, accepting liability for his pension contribu- tion of Rs. 200 per mensem.'"

"

(2) "This Sub-Committee recommends that the salary of the appointment should be £750, rising by annual increments of £25 to £1,000 per annum, and that Dr. Butler should be permitted to enter on the scale at £800 per annum; and that no war bonus should be paid."

It was understood that the Secretary would arrange for an invitation to be sent to Dr. Butler through the India Office.

The Committee discussed further the question of the cost of accommodation for the Bureau, and unanimously decided that the Secretary of State for the Colonies should be invited to use his influence with the Treasury in the direction of obtaining the two cottages at Kew rent free.

No. 147.

PROPOSALS FOR WORKING OF THE IMPERIAL BUREAU OF MYCOLOGY.

MEMORANDUM BY DR. BUTLER.

THE work of the Bureau will be of interest chiefly to those who deal with the diseases of plants as part of their professional duties in the overseas parts of the Empire. The subject is not one which is of wide popular interest in the same way as, for instance, that of entomology is, and we cannot expect to enlist the co-operation of medical men and private individuals to the same extent as in the allied Bureau of Entomology.

2. The following are the chief agencies and individuals to whom our work may be expected to appeal:-

Agricultural Departments.

Botanical Departments (including Museums and Herbaria).

Forest Departments.

Universities and Colleges.

Private Agencies, including Boards of Agriculture, Planters' Associations

Companies, and Syndicates.

Individual Planters and Agriculturists.

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Agricultural Departments of the different Governments usually have a whole- time mycologist or plant pathologist. In some cases the work is done by a biologist (New Zealand), or microbiologist (Jamaica, New South Wales, Tasmania), or botanist (Uganda, Canada); or by an officer holding joint posts such as assistant director and mycologist (Gold Coast), botanist and mycologist (Ceylon), botanist and plant pathologist (Western Australia), entomologist and vegetable pathologist Queensland). The Director, or Superintendent of Agriculture, in cases where there is no separate expert officer in the subject, may deal with plant diseases himself (Mauritius, Fiji).

Botanical departments and gardens have interested themselves extensively in plant diseases in the past, but at present are usually referring problems of this nature to the agricultural experts. The Assistant Director of Gardens, Straits Settlements, is a keen worker on the subject; the Natal Herbarium is in charge of a mycologist who publishes excellent papers on plant pathology, and there are a few other similar cases.

Forest departments have not as yet taken up the question of disease in trees, except in a few cases. In India it is proposed to appoint a forest mycologist, and individual forest officers, both there and elsewhere, have made some collections and records of tree diseases. There is a very large field in this direction as yet scarcely explored. It must, however, be remembered that some of the trees of greatest economic importance (e.g. palms and rubber) are dealt with by the agricultural rather than the forest departments, and a great many Colonies have no separate forest departments as yet.

Universities are beginning to give considerable attention to plant pathology in some of the larger Colonies. The University Professor of Botany, Adelaide, is also Consulting Vegetable Pathologist to the Ministry of Agriculture, Western Australia; and the Professor of Botany, University of Manitoba, is Commissioner for Canada of the Advisory Board of American Plant Pathologists. In India it is proposed to make mycology (including plant pathology) a separate subject for the higher scientific degrees in some of the universities, and work on parasitic fungi is being carried on in some of the Calcutta colleges.

Boards of agriculture, planters' associations, private companies, and groups of companies in some of the larger planting industries employ their own scientific experts, including mycologists. The Board of Agriculture, Trinidad, had, at least until recently, their own mycologist, while the Indian Tea Association, Rubber Growers' Association, Malay Peninsula Agricultural Association, and Société Financière des Caoutchoucs (Malaya) all keep mycologists in the tropics. In some cases (e.g., Indian Tea Association) scientific work is assisted by a Government subsidy, and the workers keep in close touch with the Government departments, but in others it is carried on under conditions of extreme isolation, and library and laboratory facilities are poor.

Individual planters and agriculturists usually are in touch with local depart- ments of agriculture or some of the other agencies referred to above, and we will ordinarily reach them through these agencies. Where there are none, more direct relations will be necessary.

3. The Bureau should be in a position to assist all the above classes, since their interests are all equally important from the point of view of developing and getting the maximum return from the economically important plants grown in the Colonies. Its chief duties will be to assist mycological work in the overseas parts of the Empire by supplying information and identifying specimens.

It need not, I think, engage in original research on its own account, both because such work is best done on the spot and because it would be unwise to deflect its energies from its main function as an information and co-ordinating agency, to work which would absorb such a large amount of its time. By research work in this sense, systematic work is not included as the latter is a necessary part of the functions of the Bureau.

4. The mycologist overseas is frequently an isolated worker with few or no opportunities of discussing his work with others interested in the same field. He is often dependent entirely on what he can read, in such publications as are avail- able to him, for information of what work is going on elsewhere in his subject. The literature is very large and very scattered; and even in the larger departments and institutions it has often been difficult, in view of their recent formation, to build up a first-class library or to get access to all the current literature. In the smaller places a great deal of time is wasted in trying to hunt up information, and progress

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