126 THE PLANT WORLD 



botany according to present laboratory methods will defeat its own pur- 

 pose, for as now carried on in many places, it is a serious cause of the 

 devastation of some of the most interesting of our native plants. Here 

 again the training and experience of the college girl would be of ines- 

 timable value. Her flower-farm might cooperate with high-school work, 

 not only in the way of providing material, but of adding descriptions and 

 photographs of the various habitats of the specimens used. When a pu- 

 pil knows that his columbine was one of a group growing in the crevice 

 of a rock in a certain photograph, it means vastly more than a columbine 

 in the air without anchorage or environment. 



Thus far we have considered the question largely from the industrial 

 side, and have suggested means for supplying the reasonable demand for 

 wild flowers without lessening the number of species or even individuals. 



Not till the property owner realizes that there is a money-value in these 

 things will the slaughter by the lawless collector cease. In France one 

 must pay to enter certain preserves where the scarlet anemones grow, and 

 then he may gather for himself and carry away but a limited quantity. 



Probably the rarest of our plants have suffered quite as much at the 

 hands of the collecting amateur botanist as in any other way. The old 

 methods of high-school work requiring the preparation of an herbarium by 

 the pupil have been supplanted by field-work which deals with the plant 

 association rather than the individual. The aim of the old was the recog- 

 nition of the plant in the field ; now simpler methods bring about the 

 same result which has become the means to a higher end. Fortunately 

 in the evolution of the botanist the doctrine of phylogenesis holds, and 

 the student of to-day passes rapidly through this phase, where, scarce a 

 generation ago, the great majority halted. But all honor to those who 

 by patient labor have made possible for us an easier path to a broader 

 view. 



To the ecologist, the student of physiographic botany, a new earth is 

 revealed. Shore and swamp and meadow, upland, ravine, and river-bot- 

 tom take on a new meaning. From the flora of a region he reads the 

 past and prophesies the future. Because the problem is so mighty, 

 reaching backward into the dim past, and forward into an unknown fu- 

 ture, it is with a spirit of reverence and humility that he goes about his 

 work. He treads softly lest he step upon some fragile flower ; he stops 

 to replace the vine whose tendrils caught his sleeve. This is Nature's 

 own laboratory, and he looks upon the results of the long, long experi- 

 ments with wonder and veneration. To break a branch, or pull a flower, 

 or crush a seedling would be sacrilege. 



It is in the cultivation of a spirit like this that the beautiful places of 

 earth will be preserved. We must begin with the children. Here is the 

 opportunity of the teacher of nature-study. The new hunting with the 



