RlCOGNITlON OF PlANT lUCTI-RlOLOCiY IN EUROPl- 379 



ology in the College of Arts and Sciences of Cornell University. 

 "As you know," he wrote Smith, " 1 have always devoted a con- 

 siderable part of inv time to pathology; but during the past two 

 years, particularly, 1 have given much attention to physiological 

 matters, and certain problems are now under investigation which 

 have a distinct pathological bearing."' He believed that the cotton 

 disease research would "' undoubtedly well repay study," and on 

 August 9 wrote Smith of his preparations: " 1 have been looking 

 up the soils of Texas and the distribution of cotton areas with 

 reference to the probability of disease." He promised to send any 

 specimens of Rhizoctonial disease he might find in the southwest. 



On July 8, 1901, Dr. R. A. Harper, Professor of Botany at the 

 University of Wisconsin, expressed satisfaction that one of his 

 students, Deane B. Swingle, had been appointed to a position. 

 " He is a good worker," '' wrote Harper, " and will push things, 

 I think." By August he was at work in the laboratory, and during 

 the middle of the month Randolph E. B. McKenney arrived as 

 another assistant. He was a former student of W. P. Wilson, 

 had been an assistant in botany under Macfarlane at the University 

 of Pennsylvania, and came from a position as a teacher of biology 

 at the Santa Ana, California, high school. 



Smith was alw^ays proud that he had been first to recommend a 

 woman for scientific work in the Department. " The first research 

 woman in the Department of Agriculture," he later said,'^ " was 

 Effie A. Southworth [later Mrs. V. M. Spalding], appointed in 

 1887 and I am proud to say at my suggestion. Since then there 

 have been many, especially in the Bureau of Plant Industry." They 

 had " demonstrated marked ability in pathological research, not 

 only in [his] laboratory and other laboratories in the Department 

 of Agriculture, but elsewhere." In July 1901 Dr. Galloway em- 

 ployed Miss Agnes J. Quirk and she became an assistant in Smith's 

 laboratory. In school she had not been specially prepared for the 

 work, but he recognized her ability as a student, prescribed a 



"Swingle by 1903 had prepared B. P. I. bulletin 37, Formation of the spores in 

 the sporangia of Rhizopus nigricans and of Phycomyces nitens ; by 1904, with Smith, 

 bulletin 55 on Dry rot of potatoes due to Fusarium oxysporum; and in 1904 they 

 made '" more than 100 freezings of various bacteria in liquid air, and in salt and 

 crushed ice, showing that the critical temperature is around zero Centigrade and 

 that repeated short freezings and thawings are much more destructive than a single 

 longer freezing." See, Synopsis of researches, op. cit., 21. 



'" Fifty years of pathology, op. cit., 45. 



