30 Boyhood, Early Schooling, and Teaching 



mented the authors on the thoroughness of their work. Another 

 former resident of Michigan, Albert Nelson Prentiss, Professor 

 of Botany and in charge of the botanical laboratory of Cornell 

 University, wrote Smith: 



Please accept my thanks for the " Catalogue of Michigan Plants." It bears 

 evidence of painstaking care, and is altogether a commendable work. 

 There is no flora in which I feel quite so great an interest as in that of 

 Michigan, as it was among its plants that I made my first ventures in 

 botanical studies. 



Many congratulations were received. Byron David Halsted, 

 now associated with George Thurber and the American Agricul- 

 turist but in 1885 to become professor of botany at Iowa Agri- 

 cultural College at Ames, tendered his "most sincere thanks." 

 He was a holder of degrees of bachelor and master of science 

 from Michigan Agricultural College and had been Farlow's first 

 graduate student of plant diseases at Harvard University. Lester 

 F. Ward called the catalogue " a model of neatness and con- 

 venience and well gotten up." Norton S. Townshend of Ohio 

 State University, answering a request for Ohio geological survey 

 reports, thanked Smith especially for a copy of the flora. Other 

 scientists acknowledged receiving copies. In two leading centers 

 of plant research, Washington, D. C, and the environs of Boston, 

 the work was recognized. Farlow and Sereno Watson of Harvard 

 and Commissioner Loring of the Department of Agriculture sent 

 communications. Beal, knowing that the list was verified from a 

 collection of 1,700 plants, sold or distributed at Lansing twenty- 

 five copies among faculty and students of the agricultural college. 



More than ever Erwin Smith was being confronted with his 

 unrelenting problem of poverty. After his summer spent at Michi- 

 gan Agricultural College, he found that he could not enter, as 

 planned, the University of Michigan that autumn. He returned 

 to Ionia and again accepted employment at the Ionia State Re- 

 formatory — this time as a keeper of the prison at a salary in- 

 creased to fifty dollars a month. Not much more is known of his 

 life during the year 1881 than that his and Wheeler's catalogue 

 was published and that he lived most of the time at Ionia. Student 

 he remained, however, and, while not neglecting his study of 

 plants, he read more and more on public health, sanitation, and 

 human diseases. 



