Last Work. Final Honors 617 



without. May I therefore be permitted to add tlic personal tribute of one 

 who for o\er fifteen years has worked under the inspiration of your guiding 

 hand. 



Dr. Smith's response reviewed " how [he] came to be a patholo- 

 gist " and his work of forty years as " a research patlioh^i^ist of 

 the United States Department of Agriculture." '•' There he was 

 regarded as " undoubtedly tiie most eminent research man ever 

 connected with the Department." '"^ 



This was to be his last appearance at a large gathering of 

 scientists outside of Washington. On December 17, 1925, he had 

 addressed forty members of the Washington Academy of Sciences 

 on " Recent Cancer Research." On October 6 of the year he had 

 spoken before an audience of sixty persons, including Secretary of 

 Agriculture W. M. Jardine, on " Things seen and heard in 

 Europe." This was a meeting of the Washington Botanical 

 Society, and on March 1, 1927, he would address the 200th meeting 

 of this organization and review its origins and history since 1893 

 when it was known as the " Botanical Seminar." Other addresses 

 were made by him: as instances, one on May 6, 1926, before the 

 Women's Club of Rockviile, Maryland, on " Modern advances 

 in medicine and surgery," and many for the National Carillon 

 Association. Twice he had been asked by Dr. Bloodgood to speak 

 at important dinners or meetings of scientists in Baltimore. 



During the years 1925 and 1926 many well known scientists 

 had visited his laboratory. On September 17, 1925, Sir George 

 Lenthal Cheatle told him of new accomplishments at the Imperial 

 Cancer Research Fund laboratories since he had been there. Dr. 

 van Slogteren visited this country, called on Smith at his laboratory 

 November 21, and while here journeyed to California, spoke at the 

 Ithaca International Congress, and lectured at the National 

 Museum on bulb diseases and their treatment. On November 30, 

 Dr. F. O. Bower, emeritus professor of botany at the University 

 of Glasgow, spent an hour with Smith and was given a dozen 

 crown gall slides and some recent publications. Earlier that month. 

 Dr. Giulio Savastano, had arrived from Italy to study " some 

 months" in the laboratory. In August, William Brown, plant 



'" Idem. 



'^' Letter from Dr. L. O. Howard of the Bureau of Entomology to Mrs. Erwin F. 

 Smith, Apr. 13, 1927. 



