ROBERT SMITH 3l 



From early boyhood Smith had been a diligent student of 

 plants ; he was a competent botanist before ever he came to 

 College. He had a natural instinct for the study of form and 

 the discrimination of species, an unbounded love of the plants 

 themselves, a knowledge surprisingly wide and intimate of the 

 mosses and higher plants of the whole British flora. Until four 

 years ago, some modest excursions in the Scotch Highlands, a 

 summer's journey to Norway with other students of my own, and 

 a visit to the West of Ireland also in my company, had been the 

 measure of his opportunities for outdoor study. In the winter of 

 1896-7, as Research Scholar of the Franco-Scottish Society, he 

 had the good fortune to study under Professor Charles Flahault at 



the University of Montpellier. Under a distinguished and inspiring 

 teacher, in a region vastly rich and attractive to the eye of a 

 northern student, and stimulated by example and competition in 

 an active and cosmopolitan school. Smith worked with sedulous 

 energy, and came home with his mind prepared and determined for 

 the work that afterwards occupied him to the end. This chosen 

 task was to be the Botanical Survey of his own country. 



For some years past, on the Continent and in America, a certain 

 school of botanists have occupied themselves with the study of plant- 

 distribution in a more far-reaching manner than has been customary 

 with us. Instead of merely noting the local occurrence of isolated 

 plants, species by species, it is the business of these students, with 

 more comprehensive insight, to discriminate certain assemblages of 

 plants that for one reason or another are linked together in definite 

 association. The beech and the oak, the larch and the pine, the 



