The Plant World 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF POPULAR BOTANY. 



Vol. iiL MARCH. 1900. No. ^. 



POPULAR IGNORANCE CONCERNING BOTANY AND 



BOTANISTS. 



By AvEN Nelson. 



ARE bdtanists especially rare in the United States? Does a large 

 part of the population never see one? It vvoiikl seem so. At 

 least a tield botanist soon finds himself the object of much curi- 

 ous and amusino- attention. He is almost as great a curiosity to the 

 averao-e American as an enthusiastic field entomoloofist and we all know 

 that the entomologist onl\- escapes being captured and locked up 

 })ecau8e he -'seems to be harmless" rather than "violently crazy''. 



In spite of our popuhti- books on botany and our newspaper dis- 

 cussion of the subject; in spite of our summer schools of science and 

 nature study in the pul^lic schools, comparatively few know anything 

 of the aims of this science and fewer yet have any knowledge of its 

 methods or the implements with which it is associated. 



In the general popular knowledge of plants we are yet far behind 

 most of the European peoples. The German or Scandinavian boy who 

 has not owned and carried his vamiiliim is rare indeed. Many have 

 made collections which were not laid aside when the term closed but 

 which l)ecame the nucleus about which the later collections of the 

 specialist grew. The large number among them who know not only 

 something theoretically but practically about the subject, — that have 

 experienced the pleasure of its pursuit, — has made possible the splendid 

 and interesting literature that exists among them upon their local floras. 

 Colored illustrations abound even in the handbooks and pocket manuals 

 with which the amateur is equipped. The collecting case is as familiar 

 an object with them as a dinner-pail with us. Evidence of this is easily 

 at hand: one needs only observe the extent to which the vascuhim does 

 duty in the comic papers, — FUegeade Blaetter^ for instance. 



