202 Investigations in Plant Pathology 



of his adored Ida Holmes of his boyhood years at Gilbert Mills, 

 New York. 



Possibly v/hen first studying peach rosette, Smith visited Kansas 

 during the year 1889. Later when recommending Swingle for a 

 Harvard fellowship, he spoke in a letter of May 26, 1895 to 

 Farlow of first becoming acquainted with Swingle that year. But 

 also he refers to Swingle as having " recently graduated " and being 

 Kellerman's assistant. Swingle obtained his bachelor of science 

 degree from Kansas State Agricultural College in 1890. Whether 

 in'l889 or 1890, Smith thought well of Swingle's abilities as a 

 research worker. He told Farlow: 



I saw more or less of him for a week or two, and set him down as one 

 of the brightest young men I ever met, and felt that we must certainly have 

 him in our Division if possible. Galloway met him the same summer and 

 was so favorably impressed that an appointment followed. Since then, as 

 you know, he has been connected with our Division. During this time 

 he has not published much but has been laying a broad and deep found- 

 ation for the best work. I have come to know him intimately and during 

 all these years have seen no reason to change my first judgment. He is 

 in many ways a remarkable man, — energetic, enthusiastic, critical, sym- 

 pathetic, the hardest kind of a student both in literature and in nature. 

 He is sure to achieve more than ordinary distinction. There is no man 

 in our Division, so throughly familiar with botanical literature Phanero- 

 gamic and Cryptogamic, no one who has such keen insight and goes so 

 surely and quicklyto the heart of a question. His mind works so quickly 

 and he has so many bright ideas and fertile suggestions that to a plodder 

 like myself, it is often positively painful to be much with him, and yet 

 I am never with him long without receiving some helpful suggestion. Of 

 course, much of what he knows about plants has been learned since leaving 

 school. During this time, however, he has also found leisure to master 

 French and German, and he also reads Italian and Russian so as to be able 

 to use both languages with aid of a lexicon. He has also done a good deal 

 of miscellaneous reading in philosophy, history, and general literature, 

 and is a well informed man on all general topics of conversation. More 

 than this, he has been a diligent buyer of the best botanical books and has 

 a library' unusually rich in" pamphlets and treatises on this special line 

 of study. 



Swingle, together with Herbert John Webber, a graduate in 

 science under Bessey at the University of Nebraska, for a while a 

 graduate student under Trelease and an instructor at the Shaw 

 School of Botany at St. Louis, was to have charge of the Depart- 

 ment's sub-tropical laboratory founded in 1893 at Eustis, Florida. 



