On Plant Faihologv and Bac;ti;kk)logv 127 



He has a special interest in practical agriculture and all the questions per- 

 taining to it. The present year he has done some excellent work on the 

 potato rot and is now niakini; a special study ol the graix' rot. The State 

 Horticultural Society stands ready to print the results or this investigation 

 and to go to the expense of furnishing suitable plates. [He is] a rare 

 man, one of the very few genuine investigators who turn up in the course 

 of a decade who are at the same fime possessed of the other qualifications 

 so essential to the proper discharge of the duties of a university professor. 

 He is at heart and in bearing a ge)Ule7f]an in tlie truest sense. I would 

 trust him /'/; every particular as a genuine man. . . .^-^ 



Spalding believed 'that Smith's rare talents combined both 

 teacher and investigator. He was possessed of " a natural taste for 

 agriculture and a desire to study problems of practical utility such 

 as plant diseases and other related subjects." Most of all, he was 

 "" a ??ia}i of character and worth," and all these qualifications were 

 his " in an unusual degree, in a far higher degree than numerous 

 college professors. . . . He uses excellent English, reads French 

 at sight with a fluency rarely met with, knows and reads men as 

 one who has had the experience of a man of the world, and has 

 the instincts, the full feeling, the kindness of heart, the nobility 

 of purpose and the manly bearing that characterize a true gentle- 

 man." This was a letter of recommendation addressed to the 

 Trustees of the University of Georgia, located at Athens. 



Smith applied for the chair of Natural History and Agriculture 

 there. He was aware that southen schools were known to prefer 

 southern men. The likelihood was that a man who knew practical 

 farming in the south and had been educated in a southern college 

 of agriculture would do better than one whose practical farming 

 experience was in Michigan. C. W. Garfield, secretary of the 

 American Pomological Society, addressed another recommenda- 

 tion. Smith was, he wrote, " an earnest worker, public spirited. 

 a careful student of Natural History, a candid practical man. I 

 can not tell how he would do in the place he seeks, but if any man 

 we have in Michigan would do well, I think he will." L. H. 

 Bailey, Professor of Horticulture and Landscape Gardening at 

 Michigan Agricultural College, recommended Smith "as a young 

 man of unusual acquirements and singular natural ability in bio- 

 logical investigations. In all the range of my acquaintance," he 

 wrote, " I know of no one who could better fill the chair of natural 



"' Letter dated May 24, 1886. 



