7o6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



guage is certain to prove injurious if 

 not disastrous to our American colleges. 

 Progress of knowledge, the spirit of the 

 age, and the requirements of the Ameri- 

 can people must count for more than 

 has been yielded to them if these insti- 

 tutions are to increase in influence and 

 prosperity. He says: 



The demands of our own polyglot people 

 are to be heard, if we wish them to come to 

 school. If we of the colleges decide that we 

 wish no one to come but those who will take 

 the one old road, the numbers in the colleges 

 will not greatly increase, even though the 

 population of our country quadruples. For 

 we must judge of the future by the past in 

 this matter. The population of the United 

 States, as shown by the census, increased 

 during the ten years, between 1870 and 1880, 

 from thirty-eight and one half millions to 

 fifty millions — an increase of twenty-three 

 per cent. But the increase in number of stu- 

 dents, for the same time, in twenty of the 

 oldest, leading colleges, was less than three 

 and one half percent. Something is keeping 

 the sons of our well-to-do common people out 

 of the colleges. It is not the hard work. 

 They work much harder on things that pay 

 less in profit and position. It is not that they 

 are not hungry for knowledge. They go 

 greedily after husks even. But among the 

 thousands of things they want to know and 

 need to know, in order to have part in the life 

 they are to lead, Greek seems to them of the 

 least necessity. And it is because this bar 

 of the Greek lies across the path to a college 

 education that the crowd is turned from col- 

 lege halLs. We of the cloisters may say, it 

 should not seem of small importance to sensi- 

 ble people ; but it does seem so. And we are 

 causing thousands every year to lose all the 

 rest of a college training, because we persist 

 in making Greek the one, universal, inexora- 

 ble test of admission to college. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



mTEENATIOIfAL SCIENTIFIC BEEIES, 

 VOL. XLVIII. 



Origin of Cultivated Plants. By Al- 

 PHONSE De Oandolle. Ncw York : D. 

 Appleton & Co. Pp. 468. Price, $2. 



Although a thoroughly popular work 

 interesting to everybody, this volume is 

 nevertheless a monument of laborious and 

 learned research. Its author is not only one 

 of the most eminent botanists of the age, 



but he has been for many years especially 

 devoted to this subject. He published an ex- 

 tensive work thirty years ago on " Geograph- 

 ical Botany," one chapter of which was de- 

 voted to the " Origin of Cultivated Plants," 

 and he has since pursued the subject so sys- 

 tematically and perseveringly that the field 

 is now his own. The present book, how- 

 ever, is entirely new, and gives what is 

 known of the history of nearly all plants 

 which are cultivated, either on a large scale 

 for economic purposes, or in fields, orchards, 

 and kitchen gardens. 



The work, as may be supposed, has been 

 one of very great difficulty. Lack of knowl- 

 edge, doubtful statements, and, what is worse, 

 long sanctioned and established error, have 

 proved formidable difficulties in the way of 

 research. Plants, like men, have not only 

 traveled over the globe from region to re- 

 gion, undergoing changes in their migra- 

 tions into new environments, but they have 

 been directly modified by domestication, so 

 that only thorough botanical knowledge can 

 trace their lineage and throw light upon 

 their origin. In some cases the original wild 

 species are probably extinct, and in other 

 cases the cultivated varieties have lapsed 

 into the wild condition, so that the problem 

 of identification is liable to be much ob- 

 scured. But greater difficulties still have 

 arisen from the fact that botany is a modern 

 science of which the ancients knew very 

 little, so that their descriptions are imperfect 

 and untrustworthy. The embarrassments 

 of the research are, moreover, heightened 

 by that revolution in regard to the validity 

 of evidence which science has wrought in 

 recent times. All statements have to be 

 questioned and sifted, and loose opinions 

 thrown aside by the more exacting standards 

 of proof which men of science now recog- 

 nize. On these points, and with reference 

 to the general plan of his inquiries, Pro- 

 fessor De CandoUe remarks : 



I have always aimed at discovering the condi- 

 tion and the habitat of each species before it was 

 cultivated. It was needful to this end to distinguish 

 from among innumerable varieties that which should 

 be regarded as the most ancient, and to find out 

 from what quarter of the globe it came. The prob- 

 lem is more difficult than it appears at first sight. 

 In the last century and up to the middle of the pres- 

 ent, authors made little account of it, and the most 

 able have contributed to the propagation of erro- 

 neous ideas. I believe that three out of four of Lin- 



