Pri FAUATORv TO Ri siARc H ('ari;i;r 87 



plants as well as of animals incluJin^ man. In Aui;ust, at Ann 

 Arbor, occurred the thirty-fourth meeting of the American Asso- 

 ciation for tlie Advancement of Science and the sixth meeting of 

 the Society for the Promotion of Agricultural Science. Smith 

 either attended these meetings or learned, through reading, of 

 certain research proofs made by Dr. J. C. Arthur at the New York 

 Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva to the effect that a 

 plant disease known as pear blight is caused by a bacterium. 



In October of that year was published by the Michigan Horti- 

 culturist,^^'' edited by C. \V. Ciarfield, an article by "' Erwin F. 

 -^mith, Lansing" entitled "Recent Literature concerning Pear 

 Blight." This began: "Nothing has interested me more as con- 

 nected with the subject of horticulture recently than the discussion 

 upon pear blight," and reference was made to a "valuable con- 

 tribution" by Dr. Arthur at the Ann Arbor meeting from which 

 Smith "gathered facts that may be of interest to the readers of 

 the Michigan Horticulturist.'^ Arthur had confirmed Burrill's ex- 

 periments and "conclusively proved'' that a micrococcus is "the 

 real cause of the blight" and not merely a "concomitant" of the 

 disease. Burrill's and Arthur's studies on pear blight will be com- 

 pared more fully in Chapter IIL Suffice it to say now that Smith 

 appeared to believe himself sufficiently acquainted with the labora- 

 tory procedures of bacteriologists to be convinced that Dr. Arthur, 

 making use of culture methods similar to those used by DeBary 

 and an improvement on the inoculation experiments used by Pro- 

 fessor Burrill, had proved the bacterial origin of pear blight 

 "beyond doubt." Smith's article reads as if to warrant this con- 

 clusion, and what he later said of the work accomplished on pear 

 blight by each of these scientists will be set forth in the next 

 chapter. 



Some other work which Smith had done was preparing him for 

 the university. May 30, 1885, he had forwarded to John Merle 

 Coulter, editor of the Botanical Gazette, " a translation of a very 

 recent and somewhat interesting note on the continuity of vege- 

 table protoplasm," which became, when published by the 

 Gazette,-''^ a leading article entitled, " On the perforation of cells 



"M: (2), 34-36. 



"" 10(8): 322-324, August 1885. See also, E. P. Smith, Trimorphism in Litljo- 

 spermum canescens, Bot. Gaz. 4(4): 168, 1879. 



