3 i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



has not had a larger number of followers with us. Possibly the attrac- 

 tions of physics and chemistry have drawn away some who might have 

 done good work in physiology. I fear that in this department, as in 

 some others, there is a tendency to delay beginning until a first-class 

 equipment has been provided, unmindful of the fact that good work 

 has been done by some who had few costly instruments. Evidently, 

 in the future, physiology is to play a more and more important part 

 in botany, and, as the subject is one which has attractions for the 

 public, they could probably be induced to provide the necessary in- 

 struments. It is to be hoped, however, that, in asking for a proper 

 outfit, liberally disposed persons will be given to understand that it is 

 to be used for work and not for ordinary class instruction. Certainly, if 

 the colleges are to keep pace with the times, they must pay more atten- 

 tion to physiology than they now do. It is too much to expect that 

 many of them should be able to support laboratories for physiological 

 research, but we ought to have at least half a dozen such labora- 

 tories in the countr}*. We shall probably have to do as they do 

 abroad, where some universities pay particular attention to physi- 

 ology, while others devote their main strength to other departments 

 of botany. 



If we should look to college professors and a few experts for what 

 we still have to be done in systematic botany, and to those connected 

 with the more important laboratories for physiological work of the 

 higher grade, histology and the study of life-histories are subjects of 

 vast extent, and, in most of their phases, can be studied successfully by 

 private individuals as well as by professionals. Especially in the mat- 

 ter of life-histories, persons living in the country, or on the sea-shore, 

 are often more favorably situated than those obliged to reside at the 

 large colleges for the greater part of the year. Since for some years 

 to come the opportunities for research on the part of college instructors 

 must be limited by the excessive and unreasonable amount of ordinary 

 class instruction imposed on them, we must look to non-professionals, 

 to a large extent, to accomplish the work of research necessary to raise 

 us to the level of foreign investigators in the departments just named. 

 The proper direction and utilization of the work of amateurs is of 

 especial importance in this country. The amateur abounds more with 

 us than in any other country with the exception of England. "We 

 have an immense variety, from the gay and gallant young man who is 

 going to do something for science, but who now can barely pay his 

 club expenses in winter and run a steam-yacht in summer, down to the 

 impecunious ignoramus who informs you that he is going to write a 

 book, to include all the fungi of this continent, and coolly asks you to 

 give or lend him all your books and specimens, and tell him how to 

 begin. We have the male bore, who kills our time by forcing us to 

 help him kill his ; and a copious supply of mild-eyed, sweet-tongued 

 women, whom we can not scold, because they are conscientious, and 



