398 First European Journey 



From Rome Dr. and Mrs. Smith went to Florence, and there 

 he found in several centers " a good deal of scientific activity." 

 On April 26 he began several conferences with Dr. Pasquale 

 Baccarini at the R. Istituto di Studi Superiori, " the most suitable 

 place for research work [he had} seen," the building devoted to 

 botany being new and the equipment consisting of a very large 

 herbarium, suitable rooms and good apparatus for laboratory 

 work, extensive preserved materials and collections, and a botanic 

 garden and hothouses showing capable gardening care. The 

 director of botanical investigations and his assistants were always 

 " very courteous and friendly," as was also Stephen Sommier, 

 systematic botanist and author of many papers on the Italian flora. 

 Dr. Baccarini gave Smith reprints of his papers on mal nero and 

 other subjects, and offered his aid to secure material of "' a lemon 

 spot disease from Catania. This," Smith wrote, " he has described 

 as due to bacteria. His description suggests the lemon-spot disease 

 of California which has proved so serious in recent years and the 

 cause of which is still somewhat uncertain, but with the prepon- 

 derance of evidence at present in favor of a fungous origin.* In 

 California the lemons on the lower part of the tree are the ones 

 principally attacked." At the natural history museum Dr. Antonio 

 Berlese showed him " an elaborate work," being published in 

 parts, on anatomy of insects. Dr. Giacomo del Guercio, another 

 entomologist, showed him the museum's '" library, collections, 

 apparatus, etc and promised to send [him] material illustrating 

 certain bacterial diseases, one of grapes, and one of olives. He 

 desires," noted Smith, "Aphides, especially gall-forming species." 

 The medical school laboratories and clinics there were also visited, 

 and their treatments for lupus by Roentgen's rays and otherwise 

 v/ere among the many points of special interest to the American 

 scientist. 



At Pisa Smith met Dr. Giovanni Arcangeli, another able sys- 

 tematic botanist, who showed him about their herbarium which 

 was " of considerable size and in good condition " and their botanic 

 garden which, while less attractive than the garden at Naples, had 



^ In 1926, in his address, Fifty years of patiiology, op. cit., 29, Smith said: "In 

 1906 Ralph E. Smith, in California, described a brown rot of lemons due to a 

 peronosporaceous fungus, called by him Pythiacystis nov. gen. but said by Leonian 

 to be only another Phytophthora." In his journal, however, E. F. Smith did not 

 mention R. E. Smith's description of that year. 



