THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 161 



tcaohtT of biology who cannot liclj) the- forming grade teach- 

 ers to get this knowledge, really is not. lilted for the place he 

 holds; hut college t(X) rearely can or does fit him. 1 fear 

 we must look for the beginnings of this knowledge where 

 they lay several generations ago — among the self-helped and 

 self-taught fathers and mothers to whom little children turn, 

 at hrst. in the confidence that they know, or have, or will 

 learn, or will get what is asked for whenever it is neither 

 unreasonable nor harmful. I\Iy heart is very warm for the 

 person groping for such self-help; and for the simple-minded 

 apostle of real nature-knowledge who, in the complexity of 

 our specializations and prerequisite requirements c'm not 

 reasonabh- hope to get or hold a teacher's place, whatever he 

 may know, unless he produce some sort of academic sealed 

 and heribboned oi)en-sessame. If ever we can get back to 

 this common possession of our modestly educated forefathers 

 — and the means of self-education are myriad now where 

 they were ver\- few for our ancestors — no college class will 

 smile at the thought that it may contain a potential Hales, or 

 Hofmeister, a Gray, a Mendel. Here in the class-room, 

 even without laboratories, greenhouses, herbaria or gardens — 

 lies our own personal point of contact with the relation of 

 botany or of any science to agriculture — or to anything else. 

 The inspiration of an enthusiastic teacher, an indefatigable 

 investigator, an aging man who ne\er can become encysted 

 by age Init whose liorizon increases with the years, is tlie 

 contribution of college and university that develop it. These 

 are the men who make laboratories, wh(^ devise means to 

 ends — whom others follow. — Dr. U^iUiam Trelcasc in Sci- 

 ence. 



Snowballs and thk W'eatukk. — It is well known that 

 cool weather disposes plants to accumulate sugar in their 

 tissues and that this in some wav influences the pigments in 



