BOOKS AND CURRENT LITERATURE . 217 



fidence and understanding have botany and botanists won, among 

 peoi^lo in general by any of the methods so far followed? Medical bot- 

 any long ago won its firmly established place. Agriciiltm-e and horti- 

 culture are respected and popular: but the clamor for agriculture and 

 horticulture in the school is raised by people who do not know that their 

 children will get little besides elementary botany of some sort or other; 

 and the cry is caused by botanists who do not yet see what a hungry 

 world requires of the professed students of the only organisms ever 

 capable of furnishing food. 



Some botanists devote their Hves to seeking the means by which 

 most plants continue, as they did before they were "investigated," to 

 send their roots down and their stems up — but who cares? Others 

 devote precious human life to the accmnulation and description of 

 vegetable cadavers. Others spejid life and time on disease and disease. 

 But meantime green and living organisms are carrying on, in daylight 

 and in health, the most important chemical reaction in nature, the con- 

 version of innutritious water and carbon-dioxic!e into an indispensable 

 food. Botany is the study of food production and of food producers. 

 Anjdihing else is something less or something other than botany. Plant 

 pathology is less; agriculture, horticulture, forestry are less; plant 

 breeding is less. But they are all parts of the science to which we 

 are devoted, emphasizing now one, now another, aspect of it which 

 especially interests or impresses us. But what the world wants it is 

 willing to pay for. It will pay for little that it does not want. What 

 it always wants is food. It is willing to pay for it, for its improvement 

 in quantity, quality, and availability. It is willing to paj^ for what 

 food makes in the form of various other commodities. But for the 

 student of esthetic or sentimental or speculative botany it may have 

 as little need and as little pay as for the man who does nothing but 

 study blind fishes while the world is battling for life and freedom. I 

 do not believe that the friend who was studying blind fishes 3^ears ago 

 is studying them now; he cannot. Nor should botanists be unmoved 

 by the world's agony or, being moved, fail to make their science meet 

 the need, modifying their studies in order to meet the new conditions 

 and the new demands. Does the book before us do this? 



The names of the authors guarantee that the work is well done in the 

 sense that it is done carefully and discriminatingly, the facts are well 

 chosen, and the statements are clear and explicit. There is no assertion 

 that the reader has seen in the book to the same effect as the preceding 

 discussion. Perhaps it is because the authors have been parts of a 



