3H SCIENCE PROGRESS 



distinguished visitors, such as Professors Goebel, Haberlandt, 

 and others, but the work done by the ordinary run of visitors 

 seems to show a distinct falling-off as time has passed by, or 

 rather, the matter with which they have worked has been of 

 less general interest. The earlier visitors were able to work 

 at many " obvious " problems or phenomena, which stare in 

 the face any one visiting a tropical garden, and yet whose 

 solution exercised a considerable effect upon botany generally. 

 Later visitors have found all these problems already worked at, 

 and have had some trouble in finding any problems or phenomena 

 which would afford the subjects of a few months' work. 



The fact, in general, seems to be that the problems which 

 can be solved by a visit of a few months to the tropics — except 

 in the case of anatomical questions, the material for which can 

 be collected in the tropics and taken home to Europe — are now 

 but few and far between, and are not to be distinguished by 

 the ordinary visitor, for want of the necessary preliminary 

 acquaintance with the general life-phenomena of the tropics. 

 The visitor who comes to ,the tropics for a short period may 

 indeed benefit himself enormously, but he must not expect, 

 unless he is a man of unusual penetration, to be able to do any 

 very remarkable original work. These remarks are not to be 

 understood as deprecating visits to the tropics, for the botanist 

 who has never been there has not quite the true understanding 

 of vegetable life, but as pointing out the reason why so many 

 visitors somewhat disappoint expectations formed in Europe. 

 A good many people in Europe have still the impression that 

 a botanist has merely to go to the tropics immediately to 

 see before him numerous problems or phenomena awaiting 

 investigation, and to be solved in a short time. 



What is wanted now, for the proper working out of the 

 innumerable problems that remain for solution in the tropics, 

 is that men shall spend sufficiently long there to become at 

 home with the unwonted aspects of vegetable life, and to have 

 the time to work at problems requiring long periods for their 

 proper solution. The visitor who has only three or four 

 months at his disposal should spend the bulk of it, not in doing 

 research work in the laboratory, but in getting as much 

 acquaintance and familiarity as he can with the many unfamiliar 

 aspects under which vegetation presents itself in the hotter and 

 damper regions of the globe. 



