Of Tin; S( ii-nce of Plant Bactfriology 313 



determining in a thousand and one descriptions exactly what color 

 is meant," and for this reason it had a special value to mycologists. 



hi 1896 Dr. B. M. Watson of the Bussey histitution of Harvard 

 invited Smith to lecture before the Massachusetts Horticultural 

 Society early the following year on the John L. Russell foundation. 

 He was asked to speak " on the latest discoveries of the connec- 

 tion of the fungi and horticulture," but the subject was " open to 

 the broadest interpretation " and his only restriction was that it be 

 " something on the economic side." He chose " The Spread of 

 Plant Diseases a consideration of some of the ways in which 

 parasitic organisms^ are disseminated." ^' His discussion included 

 bacterial as well as fungous diseases, and the occasion took place 

 on March 27. He was invited to visit Dr. and Mrs. Theobald 

 Smith at Jamaica Plain, and he arranged an appointment with 

 Farlow to secure advice on a point about which he brought 

 drawings and slides. So well received was his lecture that the 

 next year when, to attend the 50th anniversary meeting of the 

 American Association and fulfill his duties as secretary of Section 

 G, he again visited Boston, Dr. Charles O. Whitman invited him 

 to spend a day or two at Woods Hole and arranged that the next 

 year he should deliver a dozen lectures at the Marine Biological 

 Laboratory. Smith was a member of the Cosmos Club of Wash- 

 ington. In its assembly hall November 20, 1897, he lectured 

 before the Biological Society on " Bacterial Diseases of Plants." 

 January 1898, again he lectured on " Some Bacterial Diseases of 

 Truck Crops " '^^ to the Peninsula Horticultural Society meeting at 

 Snow Hill, Maryland. His career as America's outstanding spokes- 

 man on plant bacteriology began to take him away from his 

 laboratory often. 



William Henry Welch, editor of The Journal of Experimental 

 Medicine and this year president of the Congress of American 

 Physicians and Surgeons as well as author of The Biology of Bac- 

 teria, Infection and hmnunity (1894) and Bacteriology of Surgical 

 Infections (1895), addressed an important letter to Smith on 

 November 22, 1897: 



Thank you for your interesting letter regarding bacterial diseases of 



*^ Printed by the Society, 1898; also, Trans. Mass. Hort. Soc. for 1897, part I, 

 117-133, 1898. 



''''Transactions Penin. Hort. Soc. 11: 142-147, 1898. 



