26 Boyhood, Early Schooli::g, and Teaching 



the twenty- four year old student urged, " is indispensable to a 

 sound education," and the investigation of our fauna through the 

 learning of zoology was as important as the study of " a kindred 

 science" of plants, botany. 



Geologists, in accounting for the origin and age of the earth 

 and the formation of its large-scale physiographic features, were 

 still ridding their science of the last remnants of the older dogmas 

 of a cold earth, catastrophic change, and special creation.-'' Smith 

 evidently studied Sir Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology and 

 found developmental theories of slow, gradual change concerning 

 rock strata and other phenomena written into the English ge- 

 ologist's chapters on geological succession. This appealed to the 

 youth as more proof of the truth of evolution. 



Asa Gray's Dariviuiana: Essays and Reviews pertaining to 

 Danvinism had been published in 1876; and by 1879 the Harvard 

 botanist's " Structural Botany or Organography on the basis of 

 Morphology," a sixth and revised edition of his Botanical Text- 

 book, was to appear. Smith knew that since the American botanical 

 authority's Introduction to Structural and Systematic Botany (the 

 fifth edition of the Text-book) had been published in 1857, he, 

 like Lyell, had become more than ever a believer in the principle 

 of orderly development. During this period, Smith, so far as is 

 known, wrote nothing on the germ-layer hypothesis in embryonic 

 development or on protoplasm and the cell theory, both "corner- 

 stones of scientific biology""^ scarcely less than a half a century 

 old. His preoccupation appears to have been with the third great 

 doctrine of biological science — that of organic evolution; and his 

 few preserved writings on the subject include mention of the 

 evolutionary beliefs of Herbert Spencer, Thomas Huxley, and 

 Jean Baptiste de Lamarck. 



Already he had begun some studies in entomology. Students 

 came to the high school from the nearby towns of Saranac, 

 Smyrna, and other localities, as well as Hubbardston and Ionia, 

 the county seat. While exploring this and other regions for scien- 

 tific materials, he probably became acquainted with interested 

 persons who helped him with his studies. One E. H. Hunt aided 

 him. He in 1875, while at Michigan Agricultural College, took 



*" Joseph Mayer, Modern geology, The seven seals of science, 276-277 ff., N. Y. 

 and London, Century Co., 1927. 

 "''Idem, 324-325. 



