THE FLORA OF NORTH AMERICA 515 



education. The works of German scholars, previously buried to all 

 but the select few, became more widely known, and many of them 

 were translated into English and thus brought within the reach of 

 all students. The German language has become a sine qua non of the 

 botanist in whatever field of investigation he enters, and a prominent 

 cause of the backwardness and decline of botany in England, during 

 the generation just past, is largely attributable to the fact that until 

 very recently few of their botanists have been able to read the German 

 language. 



A few influences were prominent in bringing about better instruc- 

 tion in botany. Foremost among these was the introduction of the labo- 

 ratory method in biology, when an impetus was given by Huxley 

 and his students to zoology which reacted on the cognate science of 

 plant life. While the laboratory method has often been carried to an 

 extreme, especially in the exclusion of field work as a means of culture, 

 it has, nevertheless, resulted in developing in America a laboratory 

 technique that is the envy of even the astute Germans. It is a well- 

 known fact that with all the prowess of the German, it took an Amer- 

 ican botanist to introduce into the German laboratory the method of 

 the microtome with its serial section. 



Another factor was the more general introduction of better text- 

 books and works of reference, a condition difficult for the younger 

 generation to realize. I have mentioned the first translation of 

 Sachs' Botany in 1875. This was soon followed by the later work of 

 De Bary and others. But even Sachs was too advanced for the average 

 student of the early days. Perhaps no single book did more to serve 

 as a logical introduction to the more advanced literature of the sub- 

 ject and to give to younger students their first broad outlook in botany, 

 than that issued in 1878 by one of the most successful teachers of 

 botany in America — as well as one of the most genial of men — Pro- 

 fessor Charles E. Bessey. 



Thirty years ago there were, as we have said, only three professors 

 of botany in all this country. Now the species has become so common 

 that one is no longer a novelty ; in the colleges of America there are now 

 nearly one hundred botanical laboratories manned with from one to ten 

 botanists each. Thirty years ago there was a single botanist at Washing- 

 ton, regularly employed by the government to report on some new weed 

 that appeared, and to assist the congressmen in their annual gifts of 

 seeds to their constituents ; now we have at least one hundred and fifty in 

 the well-equipped laboratories of the Bureaus of Plant Industry and For- 

 estry at Washington alone, and nearly as many more at the fifty agricul- 

 tural experiment stations in every state of the union, where all phases of 

 botany, physiological, pathological and economic, are being arduously 

 pursued. Thirty years ago botany was a subject thought to be fit only 



