18 Boyhood, Early Schooling, and Teaching 



Similarly in 1881 appeared Wheeler's and Smith's Catalogue 

 of the Phaenogamous and Vascular Cryptogamous Plants of 

 Michigan, indigenous, naturalized, and adventive, in which 1,634 

 species and 113 families or orders were described. 



These state catalogues brought each of their authors into promi- 

 nence, and every one of them became later leaders in American 

 botany. The work of the Michigan flora provided an introduction 

 for Smith to two of the state's professors of botany, William 

 James Beal at the agricultural college at Lansing and Volney 

 Morgan Spalding at the state university at Ann Arbor. Wheeler 

 and Smith, during fourteen years of exploring and gathering 

 specimens from other herbaria, systematized more than 1,100 

 species of flowering plants and ferns. Earlier catalogues of Michi- 

 gan plants, some originating from studies of specimens gathered 

 on the first scientific exploratory expeditions of the Great Lakes 

 and upper Mississippi River regions, had been consulted. Michi- 

 gan, for many years, had been among the leading states in the 

 study of plants. As early as 1838, when the creation of the state 

 university was still a matter of contemplation, a Gothic building 

 to house natural history and the appointment of Asa Gray as pro- 

 fessor of the subject were foremost among the plans. Valuable 

 herbaria, as, for examples. Dr. D. Cooley's at the Agricultural 

 College and Dr. John Wright's and N. H. Winchell's at the 

 state university, together with about a dozen formal plant lists, 

 were available and made use of. Wheeler and Smith paid tribute 

 to the pioneering accomplishments of " the little band of inde- 

 fatigable naturalists of the past generation. . . . First among 

 them," they said, " stands Dr. Douglass Houghton, while around 

 him, among others, may be grouped the botanists, Dr. Zina 

 Pitcher, Dr. Abram Sager, Dr. Dennis Cooley, and Dr. Daniel 

 Clark, of whom alone Dr. Clark remain[ed], full of years and 

 still active in the pursuit of his favorite science." Indebtedness 

 was acknowledged to George Thurber, a contemporary of Torrey 

 and Gray and still influential as editor of the American Agricul- 

 turist, to Professor Albert Nelson Prentiss and Professor J. C. 

 Holmes, formerly with Michigan Agricultural College. Once, 

 while on a visit to Hubbardston, Smith became acquainted with 

 Liberty Hyde Bailey, junior, who, while a student at Michigan 

 Agricultural College had met Wheeler and accepted his invitation 



