BOTANICAL HISTORY 469 



genuity of the researcher will determine how effectively and extensively use 

 can be made of such institutional facilities irrespective of direct or indirect 

 affiliation; and, as subordinate and supplementary aids, facilities of state and 

 regional Historical Society libraries and work may nearly always be located. 

 Bibliographies of older and more recent books relevant to the subject should 

 also be consulted; and often to locate each and all of such the card index 

 files of the Library of Congress, and of the New York, Boston, and Chicago 

 public libraries, should be checked. 



In preparing a manuscript, the author, if he plans publishing and if fortunate 

 to know in advance his or her company or press, should follow format rules 

 of the prospective publisher. That has become of salient practical importance 

 since manuscript requirements vary and much time can be saved by advance 

 knowledge of such requirements. 



Dominant is the persuasion that only by books or articles written will 

 materials be perpetuated in proper historical perspective for posterity. This 

 author knows that had his work been begun a quarter century earlier his 

 studies would have been advantaged by other collections which in the interim 

 had been either destroyed, lost, or divided among many beneficiaries. Noth- 

 ing displaces assiduousness of workmanship, as well in gathering research 

 matter as in their organizing and writing. Books are never prepared by re- 

 search alone, and often an author can become bogged down by letting his 

 research stray into details comparatively unimportant (that is, not germane 

 to the main subject) or by accumulating more research than he can effectively 

 handle. It is well to put reasonably complete subject matter into first writing 

 as soon as possible. In course of such first writing, the author will learn weak 

 points and where and what further study and research is required; and the 

 final manuscript will represent several exercises of this discipline. With further 

 work of necessary condensations, the final accomplishment will culminate. 



In all humility the foregoing is submitted as representing a fair summary 

 of one writer's practical experience in this field. His hope is that, where col- 

 lections are not already started, institutions and scientists themselves will 

 assemble materials in historical botany — manuscript or collection centers 

 thereby being established or built, to which others may add, and of which 

 yet others may make use. The need of such in the more recently created 

 branches of botanical investigation and scientific learning is urgent. Instead 

 of periodic destruction of materials as in some quarters of the past, there 

 should now be substituted carefully selected and durably preserved col- 

 lections. How much of early American botany's background history would be 

 known today had not Torrey, Gray, Farlow, Engelmann, and yet other pio- 

 neers possessed a historical as well as scientific sense? And, further, how much 

 of their and later periods' history would be available had not men of the 

 leadership at Harvard University and at the New York and Missouri botanical 

 gardens preserved their collections? Fortunate this author was in early ac- 

 quaintance with Mr. C. A. Weatherby of Harvard and Dr. J. H. Barnhart of 



