THE TASK OF AMERICAN BOTANISTS. 311 



and could be done well by careful, conscientious workers, without a 

 Ion a- experience and without extensive libraries. As far as equipment 

 is concerned, there are, of course, subjects in physiology which require 

 the elaborate apparatus found only in large botanical establishments, 

 but there are others which do not. The botanist who declares that 

 he can not do physiological work because he has not a large amount 

 of apparatus, would do well to recall the case of a Mr. Charles 

 Darwin, who published something on the power of movement in 

 plants. 



If the formal publication of descriptions of new species had better 

 be left to a few experts, the collection of material must be accomplished 

 mainly by those who are not connected with colleges, and who are not 

 in a position to profit by large libraries and herbaria, and we have to 

 consider one very perplexing question, viz., How can collectors receive a 

 suitable recognition of their work ? The sneering remark, " He is only a 

 collector," is in many cases grossly unjust. In a large part of our coun- 

 try, the work must for some time to come consist in the discovery of 

 the plants not before known, or not well known, and in such regions the 

 work of the collector is just what is wanted. The man who with a keen 

 eye goes into the field and collects, making discriminating notes on 

 the habits and relationships of plants, is doing a very valuable service 

 for science, and is as truly a botanist, in the best sense of the word, as 

 he who, differently situated, writes descriptive monographs or pursues 

 histological or physiological work. The temptation is for a person 

 who, from his surroundings, ought to be a collector, to suppose that he 

 should go further and attempt to describe the species he has found a 

 task which, as I have already said, can not well be performed away 

 from large libraries and collections. For one, I honor those active 

 and intelligent men and women who, isolated from the botanical 

 centers, bring together the material of which, in the future, books and 

 monographs are to be made. It is not enough to call them merely 

 collectors. They are botanists in full standing. 



If I have said that descriptive botany can be studied best by per- 

 sons attached to the colleges and the comparatively few experts who 

 have access to large collections and libraries, I by no means think that 

 botanical research in colleges should be limited to this field. The one 

 department in which we are already entitled to hold up our heads and 

 say, " We are as good as anybody," is systematic phrenogamic botany. 

 In every other department we are behind hand, and must hurry if we 

 would catch up with our more advanced transatlantic brothers. If I 

 have spent some time in defending the claims of systematic botany, it 

 was because the rising generation have developed an unwarranted con- 

 tempt for such work. The claims of vegetable physiology on our 

 young men are very great; and when we consider that, as a nation, we 

 are noted for our inventive powers and fondness for studies having a 

 practical bearing, it seems a little strange that vegetable physiology 



