250 Early Studies in Bacterial Plant Diseases 



Company that year published Spalding's Guide to the Study of 

 Common Plants, An Introduction to Botany, which, as a laboratory 

 guide rather than general text-book, was well received, particu- 

 larly for instruction in high schools for which it was planned. 

 This book, Smith believed, exercised a strong influence in changing 

 the type of botanical teaching in our common schools. ^^ It was 

 in harmony with his own concepts of what modern university 

 botanical instruction should stress. He believed that " floristic 

 botany [had] dominated too long in this country," that emphasis 

 should be placed " on the more important parts of Botany where 

 it belongs, on anatomy, morphology, and physiology, until," he 

 said, " we have gone a little below the surface of things and have 

 the real basis for comparison of genera and species and the difficult 

 problems of geographical distribution and origin of species." ^^ 

 But never once did he urge a departure in taxonomy from the 

 great botanical tradition represented in America in part by Torrey 

 and Gray. He knew that changed conditions and new or better 

 knowledge would make revisions necessary. But in the main he 

 was a conservative in this, and in Chapter VII we shall see that 

 he no longer regarded himself as a systematic botanist. 



Part of Smith's literary work during 1892 and 1893 consisted in 

 preparing botanical definitions for Funk and Wagnalls' Standard 

 Dictionary of the English Language published from 1894 to 1897. 

 Frank Hall Knowlton of the Smithsonian Institution had the 

 entire work in charge, and Smith's task, one of " midnight 

 hours," *" included definitions of mycology and plant pathology. 

 Some of the work was divided with W. T. Swingle. 



Twice during the late summer and early autumn of 1893 Smith 

 had to go to southern Michigan to study diseases of plants: in 

 August to continue his investigations of peach yellows, and in 

 October to begin study of a new peach disease reported from 

 Douglas, Michigan, by William Alton Taylor, assistant pomologist 

 of the Department and a graduate in science from Michigan Agri- 

 cultural College. These journeys were important since for the 

 first time careful microscopic examinations and a field study of 



^* Dedication, Introduction to bacterial diseases of plants, op. cit. ; also, see 

 Botanical Gazette 18: 430, a review, 1893. 

 ^^ Memoradum found among Smith's papers. 

 *" Synopsis of researches, op. cit., 22. 



