16 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



everything ^that concerns plants belongs to botany. Even the 

 siiccesfiil farmer must be a good botanist though few things 

 would surprise him more than to be told so. It is lot a 

 familiarity with, and use of technical terms that makes the 

 true scientist; it is an understanding of, and love for, the 

 plants themselves. It is very clear, therefore, that more 

 botanists are roaming the countryside nowdays than are num- 

 bered on the rolls of the botanical societies. 



The students of an earlier day were nearly all field bot- 

 anists, attracted to the study by the beauty and marvellous 

 structure of their specimens. Often they pursued their studies 

 far beyond the bounds of civilization and under the greatest 

 difficulties, sustained in the work by the pleasure derived from 

 a discovery of the unknown, whether this happened to be an 

 unknown species or an unknown fact. Probably a majority 

 of such students were enthusiasts who found in botany only 

 an avocation that might be followed in spare moments snatch- 

 ed from the daily grind of business and on Sundays and 

 other holidays. Those were the days in which the profes- 

 sional botanist scarcely existed and the study was alluded to 

 as the "amiable science." The modern college-bred, closet 

 scientist has exchanged his vasculum and trowel for forceps 

 and scalpel, and with his lens, now grown up into a micro- 

 scope, studies not plants, nor even a plant, but parts of a 

 plant. He usually looks with some contempt upon the col- 

 lector and namer of plants, but there is still much to be said in 

 favor of such studies, not the least of which is that this phase 

 of the subject is the one that appeals most strongly to the 

 common people. 



Pretty nearly everybody is interested in field botany. I 

 have known farmers, business-men, common laborers, house- 

 keepers, fishermen, hunters — even cowboys and Indian trad- 



