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Memorial
The Michigan Alumnus 20-21
VOLNEY MORGAN SPALDING, '73, 1849-1919
Volney Morgan Spalding was born January 29, 1849, in East Bloom field, New York. In 1864 his family took up residence in Ann Arbor. After finishing his preliminary training in the Ann Arbor High School he entered the University of Michigan in 1869 and received the degree of A. B. with the class of 1873. After three years of experience as principal of the high schools of Battle Creek and Flint, he became a member of the faculty of the University and remained till 1904, for the last eighteen years of the period Professor of Botany. At intervals he had studied in Harvard, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania, and for two years in Germany. He received the degree of Ph. D. from the University of Leipzig in 1894. In 1904, his health being seriously impaired, Mr. Spalding resigned to engage in research in the Desert Botanical Laboratory at Tucson, Arizona. From this work he retired in 1909. The remaining years of his life were spent in a sanitarium at Loma Linda, California, where he gradually became physically more and more helpless. He died November 12, 1918, a few weeks short of seventy years of age.
He was the author of a textbook, "Guide to the Study of Common Plants, and Introduction to Botany;" a Monograph on the White Pine: Biological Relations of Desert Shrubs; Distribution and Movements of Desert Plants; and various papers in scientific journals.
One of his classmates says of Mr. Spalding: "We had no finer student and no man in our class whose level headedness and admirable qualities of character and whose wholesome influence over others were more recognized. He was so thoroughly genuine without pretense and so sincere and lovable in personality that his worth was recognized with a sort of reverence as well as affection."
Of Mr. Spalding as a teacher one of his pupils says: "To the industrious, capable student Spalding was a friend as well as a teacher. His even temper, genial disposition, live interest in what the student felt and did and ' said; his unbounded enthusiasm in his chosen science of botany; his full appreciation of the vast importance of the science to the well being of all mankind, all those were ever apparent and simply compelled the students to love him. Small wonder that they worked, not for him, but with him, and small wonder that it was claimed at Washington and elsewhere that Spalding had given this country a larger number of good, even eminent working botanists than any other teacher of this subject." An eloquent testimonial is to be found in the New Science Building in the bronze tablet presented by a hundred admiring pupils, many of whom have attained posi tions of high distinction.
Mr. Spalding was no recluse, burying himself in the recesses of his laboratory. In all the progress of the University he manifested an intelligent and abiding interest. With the improvement of physical and moral conditions in the city he was deeply concerned and gave largely of both time and money. But probably his outlook was broadest along the lines of coun try-wide conservation. A pupil says of him: "In his native state he out lined a rational forest policy and emphasized the best use of the large areas of cut over lands as early as 1875, at a time when the northern press decried such teaching as a dangerous heresy and menace to development. As an advocate of forestry he assisted in the early efforts of the United States Forestry Division, helped start the timber investigations, and personally con ducted experiments and wrote the Monograph on the White Pine, a monument to his industry and thoroughness in science. As soon as conditions permitted Spalding inaugurated forestry education at Michigan, foreseeing clearly that men trained in the subject were the first requirement for real progress in forestry in our country; and it is a satisfaction that he lived to see more than two hundred carrying his faith and spreading the good work throughout this good country, and even far beyond."