422 First European Journey 



brusone. He had written to David Fairchild of the office of seed 

 and plant introduction and distribution v/ho in turn had written 

 to Smith to secure samples. Metcalf, by letter of August 17, 1906, 

 replying evidently to a still earlier letter from Smith, described 

 more fully the rice disease as he understood it, asked Smith to 

 visit the Italian rice fields, and said that everything was " going 

 smoothly in the laboratory." John R. Johnston, he informed, vv^as 

 " working on the potato material, and also on the cultures- of 

 Appel's organism, of which cultures were received apparently 

 from Aderhold. We have as yet no results from the oleander 

 inoculations. ... I have examined the rice material from Farneti 

 with a great deal of interest, and so far as I have examined it, 

 it seems to be the same as what I have gotten in South Carolina." 

 Hemp leaves also had been received from Peglion. 



When Smith had hastily left Amsterdam, he went directly to 

 Varese and omitted all of his planned conferences with scientists 

 in Holland, France, and Belgium. It is possible that, after con- 

 sulting with the doctor, Mrs. Smith insisted that he complete his 

 work before their departure, and that then he went to Montpellier, 

 Nancy, Paris, and other places in France, indeed even again into 

 Holland to visit the station at Wageningen and other points 

 which he had planned to visit. Most surely he had planned to 

 confer with J. Ritzema Bos, H. M. Quanjer, Beyerinck, and others 

 in the Netherlands, and in France, with Delacroix, Prillieux, 

 and others at Paris, Boyer and Lambert at Montpellier, and many 

 other pathologists, whether students of animal or plant diseases. 

 Foremost a plant bacteriologist on this journey, he certainly must 

 have already either met Wakker or satisfied himself as to his 

 inquiries before he began his already mentioned culture studies 

 of Bacterium hyacinthi. No later than 1896 Wakker, that year 

 in Java, had written Smith about his papers on this subject. 



He visited the Italian Lakes and Venice. But most of the 

 remainder of his stay in Europe was spent v/ith Mrs. Smith. What 

 was to have been a happy ending was converging on tragedy, 

 although she had not allowed him to believe that any real danger 

 was imminent. Financially the trip had been exceedingly expen- 

 sive, especially in view of the costs of Mrs. Smith's illness, for 

 one of so modest a salary as Smith's. In a small note book he 

 tabulated the name of almost one hundred plant pathologists of 



