5 i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



for girls, but now it ceases to cause a smile when full-grown men take to 

 it seriously, though some of our antiquated coworkers in other university 

 lines still wonder how it is possible to teach the subject except when 

 the spring sunshine favors the growth of the early flowers ! 



Space forbids us more than the mere mention of some of the varied 

 divisions of the subject that under the hands of modern masters have 

 grown to be broad special sciences of themselves, though still branches 

 of botany. We need only mention the growth of paleobotany from the 

 days of Newberry to its modern phases, as carried on by Jeffrey and 

 Hollick; of cytology, under Harper and Davis; of embryology, under 

 Coulter, Johnson and Campbell; of ecology, under Cowles and Clem- 

 ents; of plant breeding, under Bailey and Webber; of mycology under 

 Arthur, Thaxter and Burt; of economic botany, under Fernow and 

 Rusby; and there are still other fields into which our science has 

 broadened. 



It is interesting to note how the study of the American flora has 

 gone hand in hand with the political development of the country. 

 When Torrey and Gray published their first great flora of North 

 America in 1838-1843, the territory of the United States, which was 

 all it attempted to cover, was very largely east of the Mississippi. 

 Buffaloes and Indians held the great west from Arkansas to the 

 Saskatchewan. Texas was just struggling for freedom from Mexico, 

 as Mexico herself had recently struggled to secure her own liberation 

 from Spain. Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and all California 

 were quiet Mexican provinces undisturbed by the searcher either for 

 ore or for plants, as peaceful as when the first missionaries of the 

 cross opened up their missions among them, two centuries before. 

 Soon politics entered and commerce, its ally, followed in its wake. 

 The annexation of Texas in 1845 was followed by the Mexican war, 

 through which the region from Texas to Oregon came over as the first 

 great expansion of American territory since the Louisiana purchase. 

 Then on the heels of annexation came the discovery of gold in Cali- 

 fornia, and the wild rush towards that Eldorado changed that terri- 

 tory in a twelvemonths from a quiet colony to a great bustling state 

 clamoring for its full rights, and seeking to be joined to her sister 

 states, not only by the bonds of fraternity, but by the practical iron 

 bands of the Pacific railroad that made commerce possible with them. 

 In the wake of all this war, annexation, settlement, exploration for 

 railroads, came the botanical explorer, and the floral wealth of the 

 great West was poured into Eastern collections with Torrey at New 

 York, and Gray at Cambridge, and to a much less degree with Engel- 

 mann at St. Louis. 



A word of mention is due to some of the early and later botanical 

 explorers to whom we owe so much in those days when it was less 



