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NOTE and COMMENT 



The Amateur Botanist. — Till very recently, whole 

 sciences, such as taxonomy and zoegeography, entomology 

 and genetics were almost entirely in the hands of amateurs. 

 Mendel was an amateur and all the wonderful varieties of our 

 domestic animals and plants were developed, one might almost 

 say. invented, by amateurs. The change which has come over 

 the situation is due to the great increase in our knowledge in 

 more recent times and the exuberant growth of our universi- 

 ties, technical schools, museums and research institutions. 

 These have made investigation more and more difficult for the 

 amateur, especially in the organic sciences and physiology 

 \\hich now demand an exacting preparation and elaborate ap- 

 paratus, although there are even at the present time a few 

 eminent amateur astronomers and geologists. Amateurs still 

 abound, nevertheless, in zoology and botany, in which it is still 

 possible to carry on much valuable research with very simple 

 e([uipment. There must be thousands of them and nothing 

 is more extraordinary than the ignorance of their work on the 

 part of many of our university professionals. I could give a 

 long list of men in the most diverse professions whose re- 

 searches have greatly enriched entomology and other depart- 

 ments of zoology. In such vast and complicated sciences as 

 biology and archeology the work of the amateur is so much 

 needed and so worthy of encouragement that we may regard 

 it as one of the greatest defects in our educational system that 

 a youth is ever able to leave the science courses in a high school 

 or college and take up the humblest calling without a fixed de- 

 termination to fill at least a portion of this leisure hours with 

 the joys of research. — W . M. Wheeler in Science. 



