3 io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



we teach that there is no work worth doing except that done in the 

 laboratories of Germany. It often seems as if we were producing a set 

 of precious little prigs, when one sees young men turning up their noses 

 at all those who do any work not involving the most complicated 

 microscopical manipulations. It is well to have our standard high, but 

 it should not be unattainable. We may well set before our young 

 men such models as De Bary, Sachs, Strasburger, and others ; but it is 

 just possible that a young man who is determined to be a De Bary, a 

 Sachs, a Strasburger, or nothing, may have to adopt the latter alterna- 

 tive. The trouble is, too many young men assume that the work 

 which they are destined to do is of the highest grade, and they expect 

 to be provided with all the refined apparatus and complete equipment 

 which the leaders of botany abroad possess. They will not begin the 

 simplest thing without an array of reagents which would be the envy 

 of a good many chemists, and the number of staining-fluids which 

 they must have around them would make the rainbow T blush at its own 

 poverty. One young man thinks he can't do any work because he has 

 not a Jung microtome. Another has been unable to do anything dur- 

 ing a vacation at the sea-shore because he had no osmic acid. To such 

 persons one is inclined to say that he would be thankful if they would 

 do an v thing. 



As far as the kind of investigation needed in botany is concerned, 

 we stand where Germany formerly stood, not where she now stands. 

 It is of no use to say that descriptive systematic work is not highly 

 rated in Germany. Our country is so large, and some parts of it are 

 so little explored, that descriptive work has by no means reached its 

 limit. The only question is, how to have it well done ; and this brings 

 us to a consideration of the comparative advantages of systematic 

 work and histological and developmental work for different classes of 

 workers. One weak point in our botanical work has been that too 

 many persons have attempted to write on descriptive subjects. Strange 

 as it may seem to some ears, it appears to me that histological and 

 developmental work is what is best adapted for non-professional bot- 

 anists, including those who do not devote their whole time to the sub- 

 ject, and who as a rule have not sufficiently complete libraries and 

 herbaria to enable them to do descriptive work well. This does not 

 apply, of course, to the older generation of botanists, few of whom 

 have had the training necessary for histological work, but it does 

 apply to the younger generation. Inasmuch as the larger libraries and 

 collections are in the colleges and larger cities, descriptive work, if it 

 is not to be shabbily done, must be done by persons connected with 

 colleges, or by those who are so situated that they can easily visit 

 herbaria and libraries. Furthermore, descriptive work should be in 

 the hands of a comparatively few experts, for long experience is neces- 

 sary to a good result ; whereas the questions in histology, physiology, 

 and development are very numerous, some of them of small range, 



