,og

a BERGEY’S MANUAL
yo

»

4

EDITORS“ a an
E. G. D. MURRAY Re ‘ Conn
' R. SMITH E. G. D. MURRAY
AOBERT S. BREED . N. R. SMITH
Chairman 6 Sunset Drive ROBERT S. BREED
6 Sunset Drive, Chairman
Geneva, New York, U.S.A. Geneva, New York

January 6, 1951.

Dr. Josma Lederberg

Assoclate Professor of Genetics
University of Wisconsin
Madison 6, Wisconsin.

Dear Dr. Lederberg:

We are always interested in comments on the text of the Bergey
Manual, and thenk you for your letter of December 30th, I am forward-
ing this to Dr. F. 0. Holmes of the Rockefeller Institute in New York
City.

Ihave read Dr. Cowles paper and find a statement in it that
seems to be to be in entire harmony with the text of the Manual, In
the days when this work was done, the finding of phages that affected
spore formers did give a method of testing heat survival that could
not de made on non~sporeforming bacteria with the same ease, This
phage was used as a test organism,

I note too, your preference for numbering systems for phages.
As one of the uninitiated I find it very difficult to get an intelligent
understanding of papers using various systems of numbering without an
undue amount of work, I have not been surprised that the majority of
plant pathologists reported to Dr. Black last year that they preférred
the use of the binomial system to the numbering systen,

With best wishes,

Sincerely yours

a
eh y fb
Robert S. Breed, .
RSB=E.

PLIREISHRES WHTTAMS AND WIERING CO RAT-TIMORE MAPVIANM 11 @ A