Diseases of cultivated plants and trees / by George Massee.

  • George Edward Massee
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Diseases of cultivated plants and trees / by George Massee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    AND TREES INTRODUCTION Some people are fully convinced in their own mind that diseases of cultivated plants increase in number and intensity year by year. In connection with this question it is im- portant to remember that at the present day the majority of persons occupied in the cultivation of plants have learned to attribute every disease to some specific cause—generally a fungus or an insect; something that can be prevented, hence a disease. In bygone times the same amount of injuty was considered as a ‘visitation,’ or due to ‘blight,’ or some equally indeterminable agency, and was accepted with calm resignation, and not counted as a disease. Cultivators have yet to learn that in addition to epidemics, primarily due to insects or fungi, of which there are- admittedly many, numerous diseases of considerable importance are primarily due to physiological causes—bad cultivation; that system of horticultural gambling represented by an atmosphere saturated with moisture and an abnormally high temperature, which results too often in a general break-down of the constitution of plants subjected to such treatment. Such a constitutional weakening invites the attacks of fungi, which promptly complete, but do not originate, the calamity. Growers of tomatoes, cucumbers, etc., have not yet realised that there is a limit to the endurance of plants grown under highly abnormal conditions, and until they do so, they will be the greatest sufferers, as preventive measures under such conditions are, I believe, impossible. It is a pure specula- tion, yet judging from a somewhat extensive experience, is sufficiently often a success to justify its continuance. As to whether plant diseases are more prevalent at the A
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