Recognition of Plant Bacti-rioi.ogy in Europe 3')'> 



of the assistants during M.iy aiui June is the only one at present open, as 

 every place in the under t^radiiate course is occupied by the regular students, 

 and they arc crowded as it is. It may not be so another year, as our nresent 

 second year class is unusually larL;e. But I hardly suppose you would have 

 time for the laboratory course. Moreover, I expect you could be[neritj us 

 more than we could you. 



Since new laboratories were to be established in the Department 

 of Agriculture and Smith was to be the chief of one, he doubtless 

 felt the need of the latest in learning on pathology and bacteri- 

 ology. In 1901 Theobald Smith had written: 



What you say of the reorganization of the work and the new laboratory 

 sounds very promising and I have no doubt that the prospects in Govern- 

 ment service are destined to grow steadily better and that the work will even- 

 tually outstrip the work of our Universities in scope and thoroughness. . . . 



University laboratory botanical instruction for several years had 

 been completing a period of first growth and then transition. 

 December 14, 1898, Professor F. C. Newcombe of the University 

 of Michigan, in a letter to Smith, searchingly presented a problem 

 gaining in proportions with every year: what, after all, was to be 

 the fundamental function of university botanical laboratories? 

 To teach, yes, but that was not the full answer; to teach what — 

 pure science or practical science, or both ? Around these inquiries 

 clustered discussion which probed the bottom of classroom and 

 laboratory policy. With humor but also an undercurrent of 

 seriousness, Newcombe wrote: 



Your letter of invitation to attend the coming meeting of the Socleity'] 

 of Plant Morpb[ology'] and Physiol[^ogy'\ came when I was in the throes of 

 helping prepare a program for the annual meeting of the State Horti- 

 cultural Soc[iety] 'VC'hat do you think of that? To such things have we 

 come. On the one hand are the allurements of so-called pure science who 

 glances casually and perhaps too often disdainfully toward the practical 

 barbarians, while on the other hand stand the regents, urging us to talk, 

 talk, talk. We say "What shall we talk?" and the regents answer not. 

 We say, " If you want the University to be represented in all sorts of state 

 organizations, would you not better employ a few men for that work? "... 

 Are wc an agricultural college, or shall we eschew agriculture, or shall we 

 divide our energies between agriculture and pure science. . . . But really 

 I believe in the organization most thoroughly. In a few years it ought to 

 be the society. . . . 



February 16, 1898, Pammel had informed Smith that he was 



