Flora of Mich'i^iin. Srum at Mk iiigan 17 



lectured on the funci " to what was then the class in advanced 

 botany, composed of members of the Junior Class. It naturally 

 follows," he later wrote," " that in the first course of lectures the 

 subject was not very profoundly treated and yet, since Ames Col- 

 lege is an agricultural institution, I found it necessary to deal with 

 the matter somewhat ' economically,' and this made it necessary 

 that 1 should discuss fungi in such way as to bring out the life 

 history of each plant so discussed. ... I had lecture demonstra- 

 tions on various spores and other parts of the more interesting 

 fungi. That first course of lectures was followed the next year 

 by a similar one, considerably improved," and ultimately these 

 lectures became the basis for his " treatment of the fungi" in his 

 rmportant text, Botany for High Schools and Colleges, which was 

 published in August of 1880. 



In 1877 had been published at Beloit G. D. Swezey's Catalogue 

 of the Exogenous Endogenous and Acrogenous Plants of Wis- 

 consin. Smith thought this "very neat"; and he added to his 

 small number of correspondents a very important trio of southern 

 Indiana botanists, publishers of the recently established Botanical 

 Gazette. In 1878 Charles Reid Barnes of Madison, Indiana, and 

 Smith began exchanging species of plants and county and state 

 floras. Wheeler and Smith had a printed " List of Phaenogams, 

 Ferns, and Mosses indigenous to, or naturalized in, the Counties 

 of Clinton, Ionia, Gratiot, and Montcalm in Central Michigan." 

 Barnes had prepared a " Catalogue of the Phaenogamous and 

 Vascular Cryptogamous Plants of Jefi^erson County, Indiana." 



In 1878 Professor John Merle Coulter of Hanover College, 

 Indiana, founder and editor of the Gazette, also arranged with 

 Smith to exchange " desiderata." Within a year Professor Coulter 

 and his brother, Stanley, were announcing plans for a state-wide 

 Indiana flora; and two years later, these editors of the Gazette 

 and Barnes presented their Catalogue of the Phaenogamous and 

 Vascular Cryptogamous Plants of Indiana.^'-* In 1882 a supple- 

 ment was added; 1,432 species and 577 genera were described 

 under four principal regional classifications: those plants common 

 to the river valleys, those of the lake borders, those of the prairies, 

 and those of the " barrens," so-called. 



" Letter, C. E. Bessey to E. F. Smith, December 17, 1901. 



** See chapter III, "' The Indiana Flora," in the author's biography of John Alerle 

 Coulter, Alissionary in Science, 29-37. 



