Fungous Disuasi^s of Plants, Phacii Yhllows 173 



Spalclini; could not promise it woulJ be a paying one and he 

 admitted the prospects were uncertain. Smith refused the offer, 

 and by letter of January 31 Spalding agreed Smith had "done 

 wisely. . . . Your estimate of the chances is correct," Spalding said, 

 " I should not come if I were in your place." Then, when Com- 

 missioner Colman commissioned Smith two days later to " continue 

 his iield and laboratory investigation of peach yellows," with 

 provision made for special microscopic analyses, which, most of 

 all. Smith had wanted, Spalding wrote: " I was heartily glad that 

 you were at last in a position to do a good piece of scientific work 

 in your own way :i/nd can hardly imagine anything better than the 

 way you are situated now." 



March 7, 1889, J. M. Rusk assumed the duties of the newly 

 created oflke of Secretary of Agriculture. Early in February, the 

 federal Congress had approved legislation which raised agriculture 

 to department status, with a place in the cabinet, in the executive 

 branch of the government. Norman J. Colman served an interim 

 period as Secretary between the time his commissionership ended 

 and Rusk was appointed and qualified as Secretary when Benjamin 

 Harrison took office as twenty-third President of the United 

 States. Rusk immediately asked for "a laboratory to be erected on 

 the Department grounds, suitable for the purposes of important 

 investigations which [could] not now be undertaken." Chief 

 Galloway had prepared the report for the year 1888 of the Section 

 of Vegetable Pathology. Since his appointment had not become 

 effective until November 1 of that year, the work reported had 

 really been that of Scribner. Galloway had been brought to the 

 Department as an assistant pathologist in 1887 by Commissioner 

 Colman, both men being Missourians. He had been born at 

 Millersburg, Missouri, on October 16, 1863, and had graduated in 

 agricultural science in 1884 from the University of Missouri. Im- 

 mediately he had been constituted an assistant in the university's 

 horticultural department, a position which, because he showed 

 special aptitude as a viticulturist, he retained until Colman, in 

 search of a man of unusual capabilities to help Scribner in his work 

 on fungous diseases of grapes, induced him to accept a similar 

 position at Washington. Not only had Galloway's father been a 

 specialist in this field but also his university instructor had been 

 trained abroad, and MiUardet's discovery of Bordeaux mixture 

 brought the new treatment of viticultural diseases into the fore- 



