PLACliD OX A NaTION-W'IDI' BaSIS 199 



there for material that other pcojile have tlone upon fiingicidcs but find 

 little. 1 played while- there a i^ame of tennis with Wrof[essor] Hailey one 

 evening and almost miraculously beat him. 



The nursery experiment of 10,000 stocks is growing well and has 

 already received three sprayings. I hope notwithstanding the dry season 

 to show that spraying will keep the leaf blight off of pear, quince, cherry, 

 and plum stocks. 1 ha\c also an additional experiment upon large plum 

 trees, one on orchard quinces and another upon a different kind of plum. 

 I am trying the following mixture in a comparative way, all being made 

 up to a common strength of solution. 



Very weak Bordeaux mixture 



Copper acetate (two ditlerent strengths) 

 Potassium sulphide 



Chloride of lime (three different strengths) 

 Glue mixture of CuSo4 & Na2Co3 & Glue 

 I also started in the green house a series of experiments to see if the 

 potting bed botrytis can be controlled. I put in eight different substances 

 into the soil, but so far they have turned out entirely negative. 



But the hardest work I have to do, Smith, is to keep the nurserymen and 

 fruit growers alive to the importance of spraying and make friends of them 

 for the Division. So far I have not seen a single man who seemed dis- 

 appointed in the work, or who was really inclined to run down the Agri- 

 cultural Department. I have stirred up a few of the men to the importance 

 of a state law against black knot and would not be greatly surprised if a 

 law was passed next winter prohibiting the maintenance of such a disease 

 m the region. . . . Thaxter I see is studying the means of combatting the 

 trouble and I judge he intends to do it by some kind of spraying. 



December 1888, Smith, then not acquainted with Thaxter, had 

 written Farlow for a copy of the latter's recent monograph on the 

 Entomophthoreae, and received a reply that Thaxter was '" now 

 connected with Connecticut Agr[icultural] Ex[periment] Station." 

 Farlow's assistant in biology at Harvard since 1886 and the 

 possessor of three degrees from that university, Roland Thaxter, 

 had been honored by being chosen the Connecticut station's first 

 official botanist, more precisely, its first mycologist. He remained 

 there but a short while, returning to Harvard in 1891 in the 

 capacity of assistant professor of cryptogamic botany, and became 

 a full professor in 1901 and professor emeritus in 1919- Although 

 his stay at the Connecticut station was brief, the breadth and 

 influence of his work were permanent, primarily because of his 

 skill as a research technician and the superiority of his exact 

 methods of studying, under controlled conditions, the crop diseases 

 he elaborated. In 1889-1890 Smith profoundly admired his de- 



