Flnru of M/cb/gnfL Study at Michigan 19 



to visit him. Bailey was to IcaJ in the movement for a "new 

 horticulture." Durint; these years, he was more interested in 

 botany, thoui;h plant life of whatever form fascinated him. He 

 had become interested in the work of the cataloc^ue, furnished lists 

 and specimens of plants growing in the vicinity of Lansing and 

 Soutii Haven, his home. He would praise the catalogue in open 

 meetings of students and faculty at the agricultural college. 



Smith had been fortunate in enlisting the interest of a number 

 of botanists over the country, hi the east was Mary Treat of 

 Vineland, New Jersey, known for her collections along the At- 

 lantic seaboard as far south as Florida and as an early biographer 

 of Asa Gray; also, S. N. Cowles of Otisco, Onondaga County, 

 New York. Among other collectors within near ranges of latitude 

 were correspondents in Canada and as far east as Sweden. In 

 North Carolina w^as M. E. Hyams, and at Washington, D. C, 

 Lester F. Ward who sent Smith copies of his Flora Columbiana. 

 Others might be mentioned. No one, how^ever, rendered more 

 valuable assistance to Wheeler and Smith than William James 

 Beal. 



Beal, born in 1833 at Adrian, had been educated at the Uni- 

 versity of Michigan where he received his B. A. degree in 1859 

 and his M. A. degree in 1862. Going to Harvard to study under 

 Gray and obtain in 1865 his degree in science, he had excelled as 

 a student of botany and come under the influence of Louis 

 Agassiz. He left Harvard imbued with Agassiz's educational phi- 

 losophy; and passionately urged his students to learn every ob- 

 servable fact about nature and natural objects. Book learning w^as 

 not enough. The book of nature itself must be opened and care- 

 fully examined. 



Logically enough, he emphasized investigations in physiology 

 and pathology without at any time neglecting the fundamental 

 importance of taxonomy and morphology. Beal was one of 

 America's first great plant histologists; and one of the first 

 teachers, if not the first, to take his students into the garden and 

 farm field to study crop improvement and into the forest and 

 scenes of wild nature to study the natural flora. Crop amelioration 

 by selection and hybridization was studied experimentally under 

 varying conditions of soil and climate. His work in seed testing 

 was valuable. First president of the Society for the Promotion of 

 Agricultural Science, he presided at its organizing meeting held in 



