24 PROCEEDINGS OP THE ALBANY MEETING 



The following letter shows his feelings over the transfer : 



"548 Thompson Street, 



"Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

 "What do you tliink of the forestry business? I probably shall never have 

 a better chance to get into a botanical field that will be more to my liking. 

 The field at Alma is too broad for me to cover and seems likely to get wider 

 as the years go by, and I shall be stretched thinner and thinner, until some 

 day I shall pull apart somewhere, and that will be the end." 



Biographers sometimes slur the seamy side of things. This letter of 

 July 11, 1901, from Ann Arbor, referring to his transition from Alma 

 to Ann Arbor, shows some of his troubles there: 



"548 Thompson Street, 

 "Ann Arbor, Michigan, July 11, 1901. 



"I have decided to take up the forestry work and was elected yesterday by 

 the regents and given a half year's leave of absence in which to fit myself in 

 technical forestry, and shall go to Cornell for the work. 



"In regard to the work at Alma, I think I can say that I have done my best 

 there for the 14 years I have been there and have tried to make the president 

 and trustees see that if the work was to be of any value there must be growth 

 on the part of the instructor in charge, and they have persistently refused to 

 give me more than the most perfunctory attention, and have let the work go 

 on piling up on me until it was bad both for me and for the college, as ii: was 

 impossible for me to do good or satisfactory work under such pressure as was 

 brought to bear on me. Now, the college can put in West, my assistant last 

 term, who is well trained and well qualified in chemistry to take that field, and 

 get another fellow of like experience to do the biology, and J never will be 

 missed, except temporarily, while the new adjustment is being made. 



"I do not want you to think I am bitter about Alma, for I have a very strong 

 sentiment about the college, and have put in too many years' hard work there 

 to be bitter, only I do want you to see that the chances for my ever working 

 up to a higher standard in any department were very slim and not altogether 

 or even primarily dependent on my own efforts." 



Davis soon perceived that there was room not only for courses in 

 forestry, but for a department of forestry, and so he urged the appoint- 

 ment of Prof. Filibert Eoth, who had better acquaintance with the prac- 

 tical side of lumbering. 



It would have been better, in my judgment, foi' him and for the growtli 

 of a strong forestry department at Ann Arbor had he kept Davis with 

 him, l)ut Davis' position became smaller and he became only Curator of 

 the Ann Arbor Herbarium in 1905 to 1908. But this may have been 

 fortunate for geologic science, as the State Geological Survey became a 

 more and more important outlet for Davis' scientific work, and in lOOl 

 he was a field assistant on the United States Geological Survey. 



