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as an agriculture and horticulture information service, and provide for adequate
education and research in agriculture.
At the same time, the pressing threat of disease compelled European governments
to take action. Besides passengers, crews and crops, the gigantic
ocean steamers also carried pathogens. If these tiny stowaways landed in areas
with favourable habitats and none of their natural enemies, they could multiply
and spread unchecked, colonizing the new continent as true conquerors,
with no regard for national borders and disdaining the desperation of farmers,
the fury of landowners and the power of politicians. By the mid-century, the
fungus Phytophthora infestans had already exhibited its ravages in the form of
potato blight, disrupting entire societies and causing millions of people from
Ireland to fl ee their country. Around 1880, minute insects such as the colorado
beetle (in the United States) and the aphid Phylloxera vastatrix (in Europe) had
completely disrupted transatlantic relations and had sown hostility between
the countries of Europe.
In an effort to check the advance of Phylloxera vastatrix, the governments of
a number of wine-growing countries in Europe had concluded the 1878 Bern
Convention, an international convention attaching strict conditions to the
trade in plants among the signatories. 2 The convention infuriated Dutch bulbgrowers,
who immediately saw their bulb exports plummet. ‘What did the
Gentlemen assembled in Bern know about Phylloxera?’, snorted the farmers.
‘They know nothing about insects or botany; otherwise they would have known
that Phylloxera cannot survive on any other tree or plant [besides vines]. The
provisions [of the Bern Convention] are equivalent to a measure introducing a
ban on exporting fi sh in a country affl icted by cattle plague.’ 3
Scientifi c knowledge of plant diseases and the way they spread was needed
to restore stability – but who possessed such knowledge? Whose task was it to
organize it? Was it a matter for the government or for private initiative?
A private initiative
Jan Ritzema Bos was born in Groningen in 1850 as the second of three sons.
His father was headmaster of a school for the deaf and dumb, and the boys
learned a sense of duty, humility and a love of nature from an early age. Given
their life histories, all three were evidently blessed with a good set of brains
and a healthy dose of ambition, enabling them to better themselves through
study and hard work: the youngest, H. Bos, studied biology, after which he and
2 See also Semper Virens, the horticulture weekly in the Netherlands, the organ of the kntml, vols.
1875-1880.
3 Semper Virens, 29 May 1880, pp. 171-172.
30 phytopathology: a private or a public institute?