1^8 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



to the names of the flowers and shrubs. I knew from my 

 reading, even though a boy, that there were names to 

 flowers, that they had botanical names, that they had 

 names by which they could be known everywhere. I ap- 

 pealed to the teacher of my academy, a graduate of Har- 

 vard University. Begging the pardon of the Professor 

 just speaking, there was at that time no regular professor 

 of Botany in Harvard University, and I appealed to the 

 teacher of my academy, who was a graduate of that col- 

 lege, in vain for some instruction which would teach me 

 the names, or the manner or mode by which I could learn 

 the names of those plants which I was so interested in col- 

 lecting, but it did not come to me ; it was not to be had. 

 And later on, watching for everything which would give 

 me a clue, any information in regard to nature in every 

 one of its aspects, I saw that there had been established in 

 the State of New York a school with the modest title " For 

 the Teaching of Agriculture and the Mechanical Arts," es- 

 tablished by a man who held large landed possessions; 

 the Honorable Stephen Van Rensselaer, patron of the Van 

 Rensselaer Manor. This gentleman, feelingthat his tenants 

 were not us intelligent as he would like to see them, himself 

 a correspondent with scientific men and scientific societies 

 over Europe, saw the desirableness and even the necessity 

 of beginning some foundation for a more practical system 

 of education — and if you will look at the records of our 

 State of New York from about 1790 onward to 1817, you 

 will see that agriculture, manufactures and the mechanical 

 arts were uppermost in the minds of all intelligent men. 

 Science had hardly a name. And yet this school estab- 

 lished for the teaching of agriculture and the mechanical 

 arts became the source of science teaching in this country. 

 The students of this school, under the direction of a profes- 

 sor,— not such professors as we now have, because there 

 were none in America, — were permitted to go to the farm- 

 ers' fields to watch the growth of vegetation, to do what they 

 saw fit in regard to the plants that were growing ; in that par- 



