BOTAMCAL GAZETTE. _ 300 



inent withal if there are not specimens enough to go 'round ; and all 

 this leads to correspendence, and thus furnishes the "key to the inter- 

 course of most amiable minis." 'To botany," says Sir James E. 

 Smith in a letter to the Rev. Dr. Muhlenberg, "I owe friendships and 

 connexions I else could have had no chance of forming." 



An argument brought forward by your excellent contributor, Prof. 

 Rothrock, is in effect (I quote from memory) that Torrey and Gray, 

 Engelmann and Watson have so worked \\\) for good owx North Ameri- 

 can Flora that there is nothing worth considering left to be done in 

 that direction by their successors. The introduction of Mr. Sereno 

 Watson's name, most appropriate as a matter of fact, is unfortunate 

 for the argument. How many of us knew of Mr. Watson even by name 

 before the publication of the "Botany of the 40th parallel" and since 

 that time how he has been straightening out Lupinus, CEnothera and 

 Pottntilla and our Chenojjods, &c., eliminating right under our very 

 noses such species as Raiiunciilus amhigens and Polygonum Muhlenbcrgii, 

 while the rest of us might have drifted along under a hazy 

 impression that Torrey and Gray and Engelmann had worked 

 that ground all over and there was nothing left worth 

 gleaning. Just think how the Flora of the British Islands has been 

 elaborated, and with what sustained enthusiasm it is still studied! 

 What works of supererogation, pure and simple, are Bentham's "Hand 

 Book" and Hooker's 'Student's Flora" if we are to accept the view 

 that the dictum of any systematist, no matter what his rank, is final. 

 Again who is to be the botanical geographer of the American Flora as 

 the recently deceased Hewit C. Watson was of the British, above all 

 who is to collect the data upon which his generalizations are to rest ! 



I fear our friend Dr. Rothrock is indulging in a bit of covert 

 flattery when he tells us to find encouragement in what Darwin 

 got out of the study Drosera. Do we not all know too well that back of 

 Darwin's brilliant success lies a sagacity m questioning nature and in 

 appreciating the full significance of the response wholly phenomenal, 

 and that one of us might make and write down observations for a life- 

 time, as utterly barren of important result as an undigested weather 

 record. 



But there is room for all. We need not crowd or jostle each oth- 

 er. Only let us hope that when Prof Rothrock comes to establish 

 that School of Botany for which he is so well equipped, not only by 

 training at home and abroad, but that rarer qualification, personal 

 magnetism, that he will make the critical study of a few forms but the 

 first step toward the comparative study of many forms. The descrip- 

 tion of a plant with some such facile help as a printed schedule affords 

 is one thing, the description of a species flexible enough to include 

 varying forms is, so far as the exercise of one's wits is concerned, 

 quite another thing, and the study of species in groups, discriminat- 

 ing for one's self without hint or help from those who have gone over 

 the ground before, this has in it an educational value of the highest 

 import, and [prepares the student for much critical and independent 

 work a field which yet remains to be done in our home flora. 



— Emesbv. 



