Back in the United States, he began working for Scribner's Magazine, writing on Brazil and frequently returning, once with the artist James Wells Champney.
[2] They lived in Brazil until 1886, travelling widely and visiting Paraguay but spending most time at Chapada dos Guimarães, where intensive collecting (especially of insects) resulted in the discovery of many new species.
The very many new species collected by Herbert Huntingdon and Amelia "Daisy" W. Smith were described by Frederick DuCane Godman and Herbert Druce (Lepidoptera); Samuel Wendell Williston (Diptera); William Harris Ashmead and Ezra Townsend Cresson (Hymenoptera); George Charles Champion (Coleoptera); Philip Reese Uhler, and William Lucas Distant (Hemiptera).
On his walk to work at the Alabama Museum of Natural History, the deaf naturalist, who had recently endured a bout of influenza, was hit by a train.
Herbert Smith's collections were, following his marriage, made jointly with his wife Daisy, an expert collector, specimen preparator, and taxidermist.