Florida and California Laboratories 231 



He furnished Clalloway with a list of needed apparatus, some, 

 if not most, of which was to be ordered direct from Zeiss, or 

 Zeiss' agent, timer ^: Amend. Cialloway had replied that it 

 seemed to him *' highly important to push the laboratory work 

 as rapidly as possible. Tiic investigations already made," he added, 

 " have paved the way for a very tempting field for research." At 

 this time. Swingle, who had completed his and Smith's 1891 

 Florida reconnaissance and in 1892 from March until late summer 

 reconnoitered the state again, studying orange blight during its 

 period of greatest prevalence and other diseases of agricultural 

 crops, had returried to Washington and was outlining with 

 Galloway a plan of work for the Department's new sub-tropical 

 laboratory at Eustis. His list of desiderata for the Eustis labora- 

 tory was combined with Smith's list. 



On July 1, 1892, the annual appropriation for the Division of 

 Vegetable Pathology had been increased by five thousand dollars. 

 This, together with the generous offers of Florida growers to 

 place at the Department's disposal several large and small groves 

 in different parts of the state for investigational purposes, and, 

 more specifically, the offer of Eustis citizens to donate sufficient 

 grounds for experimental plats and to build under Departmental 

 supervision though at their expense the laboratory, had enabled 

 the Division's officials to grant the importunities of more than one 

 hundred petitions and resolutions of the Orange Growers Con- 

 vention and the state Horticultural Society. Swingle went to 

 Leesburg, Sanford, Altoona, and other important industrial centers, 

 became acquainted with many of the more progressive grove 

 owners, secured support for the appropriation from legislators, 

 returned to Washington when the appropriation was approved, 

 and, knowing that the laboratory would be authorized, w^ent again 

 to Florida to select the site and put to good use in his orange 

 blight investigation his knowledge of plant physiology and path- 

 ology. Botanists had recognized the significance of Kellerman's 

 and Swingle's corn breeding work at Kansas Agricultural College." 

 Frequently Swingle wrote to Smith and a letter of June 19, 1892, 

 written from Sanford, was of especial interest: 



* B. D. Halsted, What the station botanists are doing, Botanical Gazette 16: 288, 

 Oct. 1891. 



