Daniel McAlpine 1849-1932
DANIEL McALPINE
A Pioneer Plant Pathologist of Australia
Stanislaus Fish
Formerly Chief Biologist,
Department of Agriculture, Victoria, Australia
and Head of the Victorian Plant Research Institute
In the quiet countryside of Cohuna, Victoria, Australia, is a simple
headstone with the inscription - "Sacred to the memory of Daniel McAlpine -
died 12th October, 1932, aged 83 years". "Never idle" would have
been appropriate to have included in the epitaph as this was characteristic of
the man during his lifetime of search for biological truth. In fact, it was the
motto of the Caesarean Leopold - Caroline Academy of Natural Phenomena, founded
in Halle, Germany, in 1677 to which he had the honour of being elected as a
member in 1894. Not only did the Caesarean Academy have "Never idle"
as its motto, but it expected energetic work from its brotherhood of learned
men.
Daniel McAlpine certainly lives up to its motto and gave his adopted country 26
years of very active work in plant pathology from its beginnings in Australia in
1890 by exploring, investigating and developing a body of precise knowledge of
the plant disease situation here and by extending this knowledge of plant
pathology to primary producers and others in very well produced and illustrated,
authoritative publications and by field demonstrations of plant disease control.
He was born at Saltcoats, Ayrshire, Scotland, on 21st January, 1849, was the
third son of Daniel and Flora McAlpine and received his early education at the
Ardeer School where his father, a gaelic scholar of some note, was a Master.
Later he became a teacher at the same school, after which he gained some
industrial experience where he was highly regarded for his character, ability
and application. He matriculated at the London University in 1873 and, like
Marshall Ward, studied in the Science and Arts Department at the Royal School of
Mines, South Kensington, where he undertook in 1873, 1874 and 1875 courses
including biology under Professor Thomas Huxiey, botany under Sir William
Thistieton Dyer, geology under Professors Sir Archibald Geike, J. Geike and
paieontology under Professor R. Etheridge. The latter expressed the opinion that
no student worked with greater ardour or with more success than Daniel McAlpine.
Huxley's thoroughness and attention to detail left a lasting impression on
Daniel McAlpine and was very frequently quoted by him to his students. He was
appointed Professor of Natural History at the new Veterinary College, Edinburgh
and Lecturer in Biology and Botany at the Watt Heriot College, Edinburgh, in
1877 and also lectured at the Pharmaceutical Department at the School of
Medicine in Nicolson Square, Edinburgh.
In recognition of his scientific work in Scotland he was offered the honorary
degree of Doctorate of Laws at the Tercentenary of the Edinburgh University in
1882. Because he and his wife had decided to leave Scotland and bring their
family to Australia, this honour was refused as they both thought that a
doctorate degree would be unnecessary in a democratic country like Australia.
They both later regretted this decision.
Daniel McAlpine, armed with excellent letters of introduction, arrived in
Melbourne in 1884 where he hurriedly boarded a horse-drawn bus to Ormond College
within the University of Melbourne. He received an appointment as Lecturer in
Biology at Ormond College in 1885. In 1886 he was appointed as a visiting
lecturer in botany in the Pharmacy College, Melbourne, and held that part-time
appointment until he resigned from it in 191 1 over which period of 25 years he
never missed a lecture and was never a minute late. Commenting on his
appointment as Vegetable Pathologist McAlpine (8) said - "I was appointed
on 12th May, 1890, to attend to any disease that might form the subject of
inquiry". There is little doubt that his appointment as Vegetable
Pathologist was a result of the 1889 rust epiphytotic. The losses in wheat from
rust in that year were estimated to be £2,000,000 to £3,000,000 for the whole
of Australia. Prior to his appointment to the Department of Agriculture,
Victoria, he was a member of the Committee appointed by the Australasian
Association for the Advancement of Science at its meeting in Melbourne in 1890
to investigate the question of rust in wheat. The Victorian section of the A.A.S.
Committee - Daniel McAlpine, Professor W. Brown and A.N. Pearson drew up a
preliminary program of experimental work to be done. This, with a few
modifications and additions, was adopted by the Inter-colonial Rust in Wheat
Conference as a basis for action. It was agreed that the work would be carried
out and financed by the Department of Agriculture. Although not present at the
first Rust in Wheat Conference held in Melbourne on the 10th and llth of March,
1890, (his appointment to the Department of Agriculture, Victoria having taken
place after that date in that year) he had, as seen, a hand and influence in the
formulation of the experimentation adopted by the Conference and attended
subsequent Rust in Wheat Conferences held in Sydney in 1891, Adelaide in 1892,
Brisbane in 1894 and was chairman of the final conference held in Melbourne in
1896. He said that in the various reports of the Rust in Wheat Conferences
special attention was paid to the effect of different cultural methods on the
control of wheat rust such as drainage, irrigation, conditions of seed beds,
ploughing, harrowing, rotation, burning stubble, manure treatment, seed
treatment and selection and cross-breeding. McAlpine (9) stated "that for
the burning rust question the only measures I can suggest are to produce wheat
suited to our Australian conditions by crossing as Mr. Farrer, wheat
experimentalist in New South Wales, is now so successfully doing".
McAlpine co-operated very closely with Farrer by testing at various centres in
Victoria the rust resistance of his wheats. They had a high regard for each
other as indicated in the Farrer letters.
According to Large (7) "the greatest single undertaking in the history of
applied plant pathology was the attack on rust of cereals. The mighty
investigation soon to be world wide began in Australia with a series of Rust in
Wheat Conferences following the epidemic of 1889".
At several of the Rust in Wheat Conferences investigations were invariably
recommended to be made (9) "regarding all plants that are affected by rust
in the different colonies because it was felt that such a wide outlook was
necessary for understanding properly the history of a single species".
Because of the destructive nature of rust McAlpine decided to tackle this
problem which aimed at recording all rusts so far known in Australia in order to
prepare the way for a consideration of the best methods of preventing their
spread in numerous commercial crops subject to their ravages. After some years
of intensive work he published in 1906 a monograph on the rusts of Australia,
their structure, nature and classification. All species known at that time were
included.
In 1892 when Cooke published his Handbook of Australian Fungi 72 rusts were
recorded, When McAlpine published his monograph the number had reached 161, of
which 75 new species were described by him. In reviewing this monograph in the
Journal of Mycology in 1907 Professor J.C. Arthur (1), a leading rust authority
in the United States of America, stated - "Preceding the systematic part,
the first 20 pages are devoted to a discussion of the general subject of rusts
in its various aspects and from the most modern point of view it is by much the
best account now available in the English language. The thoroughness with which
the author has accomplished his task has ensured a valuable work of reference
for local and other botanists."
No one was more conscious than McAlpine (9) of how much yet remained to be done
before the rusts of Australia were thoroughly understood but felt that his work
"might lighten the labours of those who followed and that by the combined
efforts of various future workers the true nature and life history may be so
revealed that the ravages due to rust may be reduced to a minimum".
How right he was in this forecast of the future developments as at that time he
was quite unaware, because of lack of fundamental knowledge, of the extreme
variability in the stem rust of wheat pathogen, which was to upset the breeding
programs in many countries and the further developments which ultimately led to
success with new releases of wheats that combined several genes for rust
resistance.
As McAlpine considered that smuts were second in importance from the amount of
loss caused by them, chiefly in cereals and grasses, the smut fungi and smut
diseases, together with their prevention, claimed his next attention. In April
1910 he produced a monograph on Smuts of Australia, their structure, life
history, treatment and classification.
The object of this work as described by McAlpine (10) was to classify and
describe all known species of Australian smuts for their identity and give an
account of their life history as far as present knowledge goes in order that a
rational mode of treatment may be adopted for preventing their ravages in our
cultivated crops".
In this monograph McAlpine covered and recorded 68 species of smuts for
Australia and described 26 new species and brought together existing overseas
information of importance on their nature and control as well as reporting local
experimental information of practical value particularly on the control of
Stinking Smut of wheat. McAlpine made an important contribution to our
agriculture early this century when he introduced wet bluestone and formalin
dips in place of hot water treatment for the control of Stinking Smut of wheat
and he states (8) "that this disease no longer troubles the careful farmer
since he knows that by properly steeping his seed, his crop is clean and quite
recently the treatment of maize seed has been found effective in preventing
smut".
Root Rots of wheat were first mentioned as occurring in South Australia in 1868.
McAlpine in 1902 recognized Ophiobolus graminis as a cause of take-all and dead
heads of wheat. This discovery opened up the field which resulted in much work
on this problem in Australia and overseas during the following 70 years.
McAlpine studied diseases of a wide range of crop plants and, apart from his
critical monographs of Rusts of Australia and Smuts of Australia, produced
volumes of Diseases of Citrus in 1889, Diseases of Stone Fruits in 1902,
Diseases of Potatoes in 191 1, as well as diseases of vines, vegetables and
apples and pears. Apart from the above there were about 137 publications on
plant diseases by McAlpine. He (8) further stated "that over the past 20
years from 1890 diseases of various descriptions have been sent to me from all
parts of Australia and experiments have been carried out with various modes of
treatment". He further states that the results will be given in another
book which will appeal to the man on the land under the title of Australian
Plant Diseases. This did not happen because about that time he was asked by the
combined States and the Commonwealth to investigate the nature and control of
Bitter Pit. This investigation, which was commenced in 191 1, was reluctantly
undertaken. McAlpine published five reports between 1912 and 1916 and in a
review of the work in Phytopathology in 1921 McAlpine (9) states "that
careful and continuous investigation has shown that insects, fungi and bacteria
must be excluded as a cause of Bitter Pit and that in seeking the cause we are
therefore thrown back on the structure and working of the tree and more
particularly on the fruit where the disease manifests itself. In addition light
pruning was showr-r to reduce the amount of disease considerably and in
irrigated areas a light watering throughout the season instead of a heavy
watering towards the end of the period had beneficial effects and that it was
recognized at an early period of the research that there were three main lines
of investigation worthy of being followed as a means of minimizing the pit - (a)
experiments with different stocks, (b) crossing liable and non-liable varieties,
(c) breeding of a bitter pit proof variety."
It has been stated by Waterhouse (6) "that his (McAlpine's) results were
not very satisfactory". In commenting on McAlpine's review article in
Phytopathology (9) Hanger (6) states "McAlpine obviously was aware that
much work was necessary if we were to understand more clearly the mechanics
leading to bitter pit. The realization that the plant's water relations, pruning
methods and varietal differences all played a part in the bitter pit story
certainly put research workers in the right direction. The work of McAlpine
makes no mention of nutrition".
Research shows that it was not until 1936 before the first evidence of calcium
deficiency was implicated by De Long (4), 1956 before Garman and Mathis (5)
obtained evidence to link calcium content and susceptibility to Baldwin spot and
1961 before Yamazaki and Mori (14) showed that bitter pit occurred in Jonathon
apples with a restricted calcium supply. Even now, some 60 years from McAlpine's
bitter pit work this problem is only partly controlled by spraying with soluble
calcium salts.
McAlpine would have been extremely lucky to have found by chance calcium
deficiency as the cause of bitter pit.
The bitter pit investigation by McAlpine was discontinued beyond 1916 for lack
of further funds. That day he came home a very disappointed man and his daughter
told me that he was emotionally upset and said "they don't want me any
more".
Carne (12) refers to Daniel McAlpine as the father of plant pathology in
Australia and to all intents and purposes unofficially the plant pathologist of
Australia. Waterhouse (13) supports his statement - "Daniel McAlpine has
been well named father of plant pathology in Australia, we should never forget
the great debt we owe."
At a meeting of the Pan Pacific Congress held at the University of Melbourne in
August 1923, at which I was present, the following resolution was proposed by
Dr. P.H. Easterfield, Director of the Cawthorn Institute, N.Z., was seconded by
Dr. E.J. Butler of London and unanimously carried - "This meeting places on
record its feelings of regret that D. McAlpine was unable to be present at this
meeting of the Pan Pacific Congress. It expresses its deep appreciation of the
value of his contribution in plant pathology and trusts that he may long be
spared to take an interest in the extension of the science which owes so much to
his pioneer investigations." This was conveyed to D. McAlpine in a letter
signed A.E.V. Richardson (12) as Secretary of the Agricultural Section.
The plant pathologists of Australia in 1934 presented Dr. E.J. Butler, the
Director, and the staff of the Imperial Mycological Bureau, in appreciation of
the work of the Bureau, a portrait of D. McAlpine signed by most of us at the
time. Dr. ERJ. Butler (2) in reply stated - "it is very fitting that there
should be some representation of this pioneer worker in an Imperial Institution
devoted to this field in which he laboured and I do not think we could have had
a more excellent one than this".
D. McAlpine was, in my opinion, a scientist who certainly used a telescope as
well as a microscope. Sir John MacFarland, Chancellor of the University of
Melbourne, wrote to D. McAlpine in 1924 - "that his work in Ormond College
helped to forward the movement to establish a Biology Faculty in the University
of Melbourne".
Before 1910 McAlpine (8) wrote - "I look forward to the time when a central
laboratory will be established by the Commonwealth for the study of plant
diseases where the most complete equipment will be provided, where the best men
available will be engaged in the physiology and pathology of plant life."
He also stressed the need for the study of plant pathology in the Agricultural
Faculties of the Australian Universities for the purpose of providing plant
pathologists of the future.
This all came to pass.
It is impossible for me to assess all the influences of Daniel McAlpine, who has
been described as a man possessing charm of manner, Scottish wit and dignity.
He did the difficult pioneering job which was required to be done at the time
and 'gave it all he had', thus pushing down deeply the roots of plant pathology
in his adopted country and preparing the way for Australian plant pathologists
of the future.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The writer thanks the daughter of Daniel McAlpine, Mrs. Erica Wedge, who
graciously supplied information about her father and earlier enabled me to
peruse his personal papers which are now housed in the La Trobe Library,
Melbourne, and the correspondence with Farrer in the Mitchell Library, Sydney.
Also, my thanks to her for presenting to the Victorian Plant Research Institute,
Burnley, some years ago, the original letter of appointment of her father to the
Department, as well as his Membership Certificate of the Caesarean Academy.
REFERENCES