SruDiiis ON Crown Gai.i. oi Plants 4*^9 



symposiiiiii " on tlic most recent work. Can you not brini; im enough 

 m.itcrial to illustrate thoroughly your studies on tumors of nlants and, 

 perhaps with an assistant from your laboratory, be on hand to demonstrate 

 them? We will provide space and light, plenty of microscopes, a projec- 

 tion lantern and give you as much time as may be necessary for a lantern 

 slide demonstration in an audience room that will seat one hundred people. 



At the Mayo Clinic, Dr. MacCarty had reported at a hospital 

 stafT mcctini? on Smith's recent discoveries. So interested was Dr. 

 William J. Mayo that he wrote both Smith and Dr. CuUen. He 

 told the latter: " I will be glad to help Dr. Smith in any way 

 that I can and would like to see him have an opportunity to 

 develop this wonderful work he is doing." He read some of 

 Smith's papers and wrote him: " I will be very glad indeed to do 

 anything I can to help out with this splendid work you are doing." 



Smith attended the Minneapolis meeting of the American 

 Medical Association, evidently as planned presented his lecture 

 and demonstration, and was given a Certificate of Merit in recog- 

 nition of the value of his work on crown gall in relation to 

 human cancer.'*^ 



Just before this meeting, he had been advised of another extra- 

 ordinary honor. On April 24, 1913, Arnold Hague, home secretary 

 of the National Academy of Sciences, notified him of his election 

 to membership in the Academy. His election had taken place on 

 the occasion of the Academy's semi-centennial anniversary which 

 was held in Washington from April 22 to 24 of that year. One 

 hundred and twenty-five scientists, ten or twelve of them botanists, 

 were now members, recipients of this highly coveted distinction. 

 The botanists were D. H. Campbell, J. M. Coulter, Farlow, 

 Goodale, Harper, E. W. Hilgard, Sargent, Thaxter, Trelease, 

 David White, and Smith."' DeVries and Pfeffer were among the 

 foreign associates. Many of Smith's friends from the medical 

 profession were members: Billings, Councilman, Flexner, Prudden, 

 Mall, Ira Remsen, Theobald Smith, and Welch among them, and 

 such eminent scholars in biology as Conklin and Jacques Loeb. 



In the year 1913 the Academy's semi-centennial celebration took 

 place ancl Frederick W. True's History of the First Half-Century 

 of the National Acadefny was published. Erwin Smith was elected 



93 



Phytopatl?oloRy m):2')i. 

 '* Idem, 194. White was known as a geologist but he was also a paleobotanist. 

 Hilgard was an agriculturist but he was also a botanist. 



