62 THE PLANT WOKLD 



once respected the sentiment qnotecl, and that therefore I shonki re- 

 gard myself as a relic of antiquity. 



Before taking up the rather prosaic subject announced in my cap- 

 tion, permit me to present a few facts favorable to the "mere collector." 

 In those days of youthful enthusiasm to which I have alluded, I spared 

 no effort to obtain by exchange specimens of plants from all parts of 

 the Union, and of the world from which specimens were obtainable. 

 Enjoying exceptional advantages, I succeeded in securing good repre- 

 sentations of the floras of such remote regions as Greenland, Nova 

 Zembla and Siberia in the north, and Australia, Tasmania, South Africa 

 and Hawaii in the south. And mark this fact, that from each of the 

 countries mentioned, I had from ten to one hundred times as many 

 plants as from all of the recent slave States excepting Virginia, where I 

 then resided. To nearly all herbalists in those days, the South was a 

 botanical ferra incognita, and they were made to realize this the more 

 fully through the fact that the only exchange list then in use included 

 the names of all the jjlants of Chapman's Flora. 



Now suppose I had devoted my botanical efforts to the writing of 

 monographs instead of supplying, as I have done, from thirty to two 

 hundred herbaria with between two and three thousand species of the 

 Southern flora. Could I thereby have done science better service, even 

 were I possessed of the acumen of an Engelmann and the accuracy of 

 a Watson ? I think not. If a few trained workers in the great herbaria 

 were left to do all the naming and describing of plants, it would con- 

 tinue to be possible to learn botany from books; but the hair-splitting 

 that is now being done by scores of zealous botanists, threatens to ren- 

 der descriptive works of the future incomprehensible, and botany more 

 unpopular than now. However, I suppose that most of this work will 

 go to swell the long lists of synonyms found in such works as Watson's 

 Index. 



At least thirtj^ years ago I contributed to the American Naturalist 

 an article with the same caption as the above, and it was afterwards 

 sold as a reprint. When the copy was returned to me with proof, I 

 observed that Professor Gray had written beneath it "Very good." 

 One cannot understand the exact meaning of that phrase without hear- 

 ing it spoken. In later years I construed it to mean — not bad. I 

 found that my methods varied so much with changing environments 

 and increasing experience, that I never again felt like offering advice on 

 the subject, and I felt the more disinclined to do so through appi*ecia- 

 tion of the uselesness of prescribing methods to be followed under all 

 conditions of life, and by persons of infinitely varied temperaments 

 and idiosyncrasies. 



At the time when I wrote my first "Hints," it was my delight to 



