Notes and Comment. 77 



Botanists who are interested in exchanges should be ac- 

 quainted with Herbarium, an organ for facihtating the exchange 

 of scientific collection of plants, published at intervals by Oswald 

 VVeigel in Liepzig, and sent on request to those who will use it. 

 In Number 17, recently received, all sorts of things are offered — 

 Phanerogams of Germany, Cryptogams from British Columbia, 

 Braun's Characeae of Europe, preparations of diatoms, Palae- 

 arctic mosses, etc. 



In reading the address of the retiring president of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science, at the 

 late ]\Iinneapolis meeting, one has to admit a lingering doubt 

 as to whether the distinguithed writer would abolish fellowships 

 and the refined methods of laboratory study from modern uni- 

 versities on account of the fact, so cogently presented, that none 

 of these things avail in making a Darwin. If it is true, as Dr. 

 Jordan intimates, that even the presence of abundant facilities 

 will not really interfere with the development of such a genius, 

 may we not rule out these extreme cases and devote ourselves 

 to the problem of making good workers in science, without any 

 effort to square our theories or practice with the extraordinary 

 opportunity, which could never come to most of us, of teaching 

 a Darwin? The real truth seems to be that the great lights of 

 science are a law to themselves, neither made nor unmade by 

 the schools, and that meantime there are actually needed in 

 the United States at the present moment — in the experiment 

 stations, the schools, the scientific bureaus at Washington and 

 elsewhere — an army of trained men, and that this need must be 

 met, if met at all, by doing the best that can be done under the 

 circumstances with the young men and women who present 

 themselves at the universities eager for a career. It would seem 

 to be the part of wisdom to give to all such the very best facil- 

 ities that the modern art of instruction has discovered, the best 

 appliances of home or foreign instrument makers, the inspiration 

 of contact with great teachers, the opportunity of "meeting 

 nature at first hand," the best special training that each case 

 demands, and then send them out to do the work that is waiting 

 for them. Some at least of those who have tried the method of 

 sitting on a log, with a student at the other end of it, are not yet 



