WORTHINGTON OEORGE SMITH 245 



form any accurate notion of Smith's ability and versatility. In 1874 

 the Woolhope Club presented him with a box of silver plate in 

 recognition of his services in promoting the study and illustration of 

 the higher fungi : in the same 3^ear he was elected a member of the 

 Scientific Committee of the Koyal Horticultural Society, which in 

 the 3'^ear following presented him with the Knightian Gold Medal for 

 his reseai'ches into the life-history of the potato fungus. On this 

 subject he published numerous papers : in 1891, at the request of the 

 Irish Land Commissioners, he prepared a large wall-diagram of the 

 disease for schools and farm-houses, for which Mr. Carruthers wrote 

 the accompanying letterpress. In 1871 was published the first 

 number of Mi/cological Illustrations, to which Smith contributed 

 most of the figures and descriptions : this was produced in conjunction 

 with and at the expense of W. Wilson Saunders (1809-70), but 

 ceased with the second number (1872). 



Between 1874 and 1883 Smith had published in The Gardeners^ 

 Chronicle a series of papers on the diseases of plants. Addresses on 

 this subject were delivered by him at the Natm-al History Museum 

 at the request of the Institute of Agriculture, and these formed the 

 basis of a volume entitled Diseases o^' Field and Garden Crops, 

 published by Macmillan & Co. He discovered in north-east London 

 a " palaeolithic floor," of which the Anthropological Institute pub- 

 lished in 1883 an illustrated account from his pen : for some time 

 his attention was concentrated upon the work of primeval man ; his 

 investigations into this were continued when he went to Dunstable 

 (heart trouble having necessitated his leaving London), where he 

 discovered a second " floor " which was duly described. Smith con- 

 tinued his researches and found two other " floors " on high ground 

 in Beds and Herts, a large number of implements and flakes capable 

 of replacement being found at both places ; but of these no particulai-.-* 

 have been published. In 1894 he summarized the results of his 

 investigations into the prehistoric period in Man, the Primeval 

 Savage, Avhich contained a large number of new illustrations of skulls 

 and stone implements ; in the Victoria County History for Beds 

 (1903) he published an account of early man in that county. In 

 this year he was elected President of the British Mycological Society. 

 Before he left London, the Department of Botany acquired the 

 large collection of drawings of fungi which Smith had made during the 

 previous twenty-five years, as well as a series of coloured figures of 

 British Orchids, mostly made during 1862-5 and thus examples of 

 his early work, and numerous figures in pen-and-ink of pollen grains. 

 To these at later date were added a collection, amounting to some 

 hundreds, of the original drawings sulisequently reduced for repro- 

 duction in the Gardeners'' Chronicle, Floral Magazine, and else- 

 where, including a number of abnormalities ; these are admirable 

 examples of the strengtii and firmness of his touch ; his early archi-. 

 tectural training was doubtless responsible for a certain hardness in 

 outline which characterized much of his work. The drawings of 

 fungi, mucli reduced, furnished the illustrations which Smith supplied 

 for John Stevenson's British Fungi (1880). Many of these are 

 reproduced in colour in the admirable and unique series of life-size 



