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country. One of the best illustrations of this can be got from the "project plan of the organization of work in the Department of Agriculture. This is merely the co-operative investigation of a problem by a group of specialists under a project leader, each worker taking a particular aspect of the problem in which he is speci- ally competent, but all keeping in touch with one another and with the project leader. The greatest care is taken, as a rule, to preserve the independence of the individual and to give the fullest play to original initiative and freedom of research. The inquiries are carried out at various centres, federal and state officers co- operating in the work, and the former being posted, when necessary, to the State centres most suitable for the purpose. Half-a-dozen men may be working in several different States in close co-operation and under a common leader, but each carrying out a different side of the investigation, and with complete freedom of action.

The system was a result of the frank recognition of the fact that many, perhaps most, of the chief inquiries that needed to be taken up were beyond the capacity of any single individual to bring to a successful conclusion within a reasonable time, and that, for their solution, the separate aspects of each problem required very highly competent specialistic work, such as can only be acquired by deep or intensive study rather than by a broad survey. I believe this is the correct way to attack such problems, and that it is only in very rare cases that an investigator can be found whose knowledge of the several distinct aspects which the problem may present is deep enough to enable him to explore all or many of them adequately.

It is worthy of note that the National Research Council is working along somewhat similar lines. It is an organization established in 1916 by the National Academy of Sciences to advise and assist in applying the scientific and technical resources of the country to the objects of the War and made permanent by an Executive Order of President Wilson's Government in 1918. It is not, however, in the usual sense a governmental institution. Its chief objects are to organize research, to stimulate research and its application, to formulate comprehensive projects of research and to promote co-operation "in order to secure concentration of effort, minimise duplication, and stimulate progress; but in all co-operative under- takings to give encouragement to individual initiative.' It is controlled by its own members, who include representatives of the chief scientific and technical societies, government representatives and members at large amongst whom, in 1920-21, were Mr. Elihu Root and Mr. Herbert Hoover, together with several leaders in industry, engineering, and the Press. It is supported by other than Government aid, but maintains close contact with Government departments in several of its divisions. In its attempts to bring together scattered work and workers, and to assist in co- ordinating scientific attack on large problems, it has largely adopted the project plan by the establishment of special committees of experts, which plan modes of attack and undertake to find men and means for carrying out the plan. There are about eighty such committees, and many of them have obtained appropriations from industrial and agricultural sources for specific research, e.g., one from the Southern Pine Association of $10,000 for maintaining certain forestry researches, and one which is now being negotiated with a group of tobacco growers and manufacturers for the study of tobacco diseases. Through the Council, there is also being organized an Institute for Research in Tropical America which will have a very definite bear- ing on some aspects of the work of the Bureau of Mycology. I had the advantage of discussing these and other activities of the Council with Dr. L. R. Jones, Chair- man, and Dr. McClung, past Chairman, of the Division of Biology and Agriculture, and Dr. Yerkes, Chairman of the Research Information Service of the Council, who is Resident Director of the Service at the headquarters in Washington. The opportunity I had of examining the working of the latter service was of particular interest, since it is engaged on work very similar to the "informational" side of the work of the Bureau of Mycology.

The question of abstracting and indexing scientific literature is occupying the attention of various organizations in America. A joint committee of the National Research Council and the American Association for the Advancement of Science was formed to consider this matter in 1920, and the question of taking steps for the establishment of an international institute for scientific bibliographical work is being examined, Dr. Kellogg being now in Switzerland on behalf of the National Research Council with a view to reporting on the utilization of the Concilium Bibliographicum at Zurich as a nucleus for the proposed institute. This is a matter of direct interest to the Bureau of Mycology.

In a general way, much more attention is being paid to the "business" side of the organization of scientific work in the United States than elsewhere, and this is coupled with the development of "team work" in attacking important problems. They are recent developments and have not yet begun to produce their full effects, but the thoroughness of the preliminary preparation and the numbers who have combined to give effect to these aims make it certain that the result will be a vast stimulation of research activities. It was several times remarked to me that the formation of the Bureaux of Entomology, Tropical Diseases, and Mycology in London was evidently in response to similar needs, and that we should keep in close touch with one another. In the development of closer international relations, the trend in America is in favour of separate national organizations in the different countries with close mutual relations rather than single international institutions such as the International Institute of Agriculture at Rome. In our work we cannot fail to develop international contacts, and the sympathetic attitude towards such contacts (especially with the British Empire) which I found to be pretty general in the States will be well worth consolidating even though not a declared function of the Bureau of Mycology. I found a very wide recognition of the truth that phytopathology is as definitely an international interest as public health, and in several addresses at functions which I attended the formation of the Bureau of Mycology was welcomed on account of the international significance of its work.

4. Experimental and Extension Work in certain Crop Areas. The chief places visited with the special object of seeing the work on crop improvement and diseases were St. Paul (Minnesota) for cereals, Fargo (North Dakota) for flax, Baton Rouge and Audubon Park (Louisiana) for sugarcane and rice, Hartsville (South Carolina) for cotton and maize, New Haven (Connecticut) for tobacco and maize, St. Catherines (Ontario, Canada) for fruit, Lansing (Michigan), Lafayette (Indiana), and Urbana (Illinois) for cereals, fruit, and vegetables, and Cornell (New York) for maize.

The principal objects were to see what work was actually being done in certain areas on these crops, and to get into personal touch with the men in charge of this work so as to facilitate future relations. The chief value of this will be that I shall be better able to apply or to refer applications from overseas correspondents of the Bureau to the most likely American source of assistance in special inquiries. Want of time prevented me from fully carrying out my programme in this direction. What I saw convinced me that America is far ahead of other countries in the general application of modern methods of plant breeding and the use of fungicides for the reduction of the wastage due to disease. Maize, wheat, cotton, beans, sugar- cane, tobacco, and fruit were the principal crops seen in which these methods were being applied with the greatest success.

The very great attention directed to this matter in the United States is the result not only of the magnitude of their agricultural industry, but also of the generally great severity of the diseases of their crops. On the whole, the diseases of plants that have an economic value are distinctly worse in the United States than in Europe, though not worse than in some of the overseas parts of the British Empire. The reason for this appears to be that there are two factors concerned in intensifying diseases in countries that are newly opened up to settled agriculture. (1) the crops grown are largely exotic, and hence become exposed to the attack of indigenous parasites against which they have not developed powers of resistance; (2) with the introduction of new plants of economic value, exotic parasites are brought in, and some of these develop into serious pests of pre-existing plants in their new home. In Europe both these factors doubtless operated in the past, and the latter was responsible for the enormous ravages of introduced vine diseases in the last century. But the process has been very gradual in Europe as compared with America, and the centuries-long history of the operation of these two factors in Europe has been condensed into the last century, or even half-century, in the United States, especially in the centre and west of the country. The same phenome- non is marked in many of the British overseas possessions, and is likely to become increasingly evident in some in the future.

5. Concluding Remarks. It is impossible to exaggerate the value to a working mvcologist of a tour in the United States at the present time. In the last ten years the study of the diseases of plants in that country has progressed until it now easily leads the rest of the world. Since the War, American phytopathologists have redoubled their energies, and the next ten years will, I believe, see an accelerated

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