CHAPTER I 



PRESENT-DAY BOTANY A CONTRAST 



FEW pursuits are more thoroughly misunderstood 

 by the average person of education than that of the 

 present-day botanist. It is not want of sympathy 

 which leads to this. Almost everyone has an interest 

 in the plants which he sees around him, sometimes 

 from the point of view of their beauty, sometimes of 

 their use to himself or to the human race at large : 

 sometimes the interest is the more philosophical one 

 of their place in organic nature, or of their origin 

 in point of time as disclosed by the evidence of the 

 fossils. On one or another of these grounds the 

 botanist finds some feeling for the science of his 

 choice already alive in the minds of his friends. 



The conversation in ordinary educated society 

 may often throw an illuminating light, revealing the 

 layman's estimate of what a botanist is actually 

 about. In this case it commonly appears that the 

 estimate errs by being belated. Old time-worn 

 aspects of the science are assumed to be still the 



B. 1 



