450 First European Journey 



and who on March 6, 1911, also wrote to Smith congratulating 

 him 



on the great work on Crown Gall which ha[d] just come to [him] from 

 [Smith's] laboratory. I hope you will know how much botanists in general 

 value your convincing solution of this problem but better than this I want 

 you to know how valuable it will be to teachers, as an example to their 

 students who are preparing for the profession of botany. The influence of 

 this is more than you can imagine. I hope to see you at Woods Hole next 

 summer. 



October 18, 1910, Carlton C. Curtis of the department of botany 

 of Columbia University informed of his " desire to establish 

 [there] within the next year a course on straight plant pathology " 

 and asked Smith to send plant disease materials, particularly of 

 " many of the common bacterial diseases." His second paragraph 

 was of interest: 



You must feel very much encouraged that so great an interest is being 

 developed in your line of work. I have not had an opportunity to carefully 

 examine Stevens' and [J. G.] Hall's [D/seases of economic plants '*^], but 

 I feel that this work and Duggar's work [Fungous Diseases of Plants'] 

 are bound to give great interest to the work in this country. 



He concluded by telling how much they used his book, Bacteria 

 in Relation to Plant Diseases — " you must take great satisfaction 

 in contemplating this splendid piece of work," he added. Within 

 another year and a half, in May, 1912, there came to Smith 

 a more positive suggestion from Bessey of the University of 

 Nebraska. 



I have had it in mind a number of times, and yesterday I was urged by 

 one of my assistants — therefore I will do it — that is, I will tell you that it 

 has seemed to me for a good while that you should prepare a textbook on 

 Plant Pathology. I think I told you this once before, but I wish to say it 

 again still more emphatically. No man in the country I think is as able to 

 prepare such a textbook as you are. I mean the right kind of a textbook. 

 Almost anybody can write a book in which he enumerates the fungi or 

 other things that bother plants, and in this way he can bring together a 

 great deal of material and issue it as a book on Plant Pathology, but you 

 have taught us in the two books on bacteria in relation to plant diseases 

 that there is a better and higher ideal to be attained in Plant Pathology. 



'"' Published by the Macmillan Company, 1910. In the Botanical Gazette 52: 155, 

 July-Dec, 1911, this was reviewed together with George Massee's Diseases of 

 cultivated plants and trees, also published in 1910 by the Macmillan Company. 



