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His Garden His Laboratory

Edwin Butterworth Mains
The Michigan Alumnus 190


His Own Garden Proves to be
 Valuable Laboratory


EDWIN B. MAINS, Professor of Botany and Director of the University Herbarium, discovered in his own garden rust-resistant
 snapdragons from which strains now being developed in marketable
 quantities by certain of the agricultural colleges have been derived.

He 
took his Bachelor's degree at Michigan in 1913 and earned his Ph.D.
 in 1916. Before he came to the University as a Faculty member in
1930, he had been engaged in investigations directed toward the development of disease-resistant plants with the cereals—especially wheat
—as his most important "patients." For fungi, edible, like the mush
room, or harmless, Professor Mains has but the friendliest feeling. But
 when they are the parasites, which destroy useful or beautiful plant 
life it becomes the duty of a good phytopathologist to do something
 about it, and this one does.

Often his wife assists him, for she too is
 a botanist. Photography is one of the tools of Professor Mains' pro
fession, but he has made it a hobby as well. His studies of plant life—
some of them highly magnified—are astonishingly beautiful.