234 TRANSACTIONS OF THE NORTHERN 



the combinations and reactions of organic products; with geology, 

 through the fossil remains and the mineralized hydrocarbons; with 

 zoology, through the aliment and habitat of animals ; with meteorol- 

 gy, througli the influence of vegetation upon the climate, and so on. To 

 only one class of people can 1 conceive that botany and vegetable 

 physiology would not naturally be interesting and profitable, if well un- 

 derstood ; and that is the class which is educated in the manner re- 

 ferred to above, so that their sympathies, their respect, their whole mind 

 is fitted to the classical mould. They can have no use for botany ; it 

 is too modern. Homer did not sing of it, and his song of how a licen- 

 tious prince set a lot of half-heathen by the ears, is vastly more interest- 

 ing to them than is the question of how best to supplv the nitrogen to 

 growing crops. 



But while we congratulate ourselves upon the thought that wc have 

 been making such substantial progress in legalizing botany in the com- 

 mon schools, we must reflect that there is a great probability that the 

 botany about to be taught comes very far short of being the most useful 

 part of the science. As text-books are now arranged, we shall have 

 plenty of old Greek and Latin names, and a multitude of absurd tech- 

 nicalities in the same languages. Things which may be better described 

 with simple English words are badly described in Latin, and while de- 

 scriptive and systematic botany receive the greatest attention, the phys- 

 iology of the plant is too much ignored. 



The study of plants, so as to be able to classify them and ascertain 

 their names, is but A B C of botany ; beyond that is the knowledge 

 of how they grow, how they live, what they produce in life and in death, 

 and how they pi'oduce it, their diseases and their parasites. 



Botany, as usually taught, is extremely superficial ; as it should be , 

 it is as deep as the life principle itself. There is a great, good work be- 

 fore some one — and 1, for one, would be glad to see it done — and that 

 is to compile a botany wliich would throw overboard the whole mass of 

 rubbish in the way of technicalities, use English in descriptions, and tell 

 what is known of vegetable physiology. It will be no light work to 

 compile such a book ; but it is a work much needed, and which should 

 yield a profit to the author. 



No thorough classical scholar can make such a book ; he need not 

 try, for the first thing he knows he will be copying the egotism of some 

 of his musty favorites, and making the science instead of rendering it. 

 As a sample of the natural science of a classical scholar, 1 saw within 

 the year past a professor in a prominent institution, and by the way, the 

 author of a work on botany, make a drawing of a grape-vine, and place 

 the tendril in the axil of a leaf. And the same high authority declared 

 that a}l plants have roots, stems, and leaves, when there are plants which 

 are either rootless, or leafless, b) the thousand. You see he was snaking 

 his science — that was all. 



But the great want in Botany is to have unore to teach. The sci- 

 ence, like all natural sciences, is cumulative ; it is growing, and not yet 



