FLORA OF WASHINGTON AND VICINITY. 57 



This sentiment, though now happily rare, is natural, and really con- 

 stitutes what there is left of that proud spirit with which man has ever 

 approached the problems of Nature. His first studies disdained even 

 so complicated an organism as man himself, and spent themselves in the 

 pursuit of spiritual entities wholly beyond the sphere of science. Later 

 he deigned to study mind detached from body and from matter; still 

 later he attacked some of the higher manifestations of life. Ethics 

 came next, and social organization; then anthropological questions were 

 opened, afterwards those of physiology and anatomy, and at last com- 

 parative anatomy and structural zoology were taken up. Phytology 

 brought up the rear and was long confined to the most superficial 

 aspects. It is only in recent times that plants and all the other lowly 

 organisms have commenced to receive proper attention, and only since 

 this has been done has there been made any real progress in solving the 

 problems of biology. It is a paradox in science that its most compli- 

 cated forms must first be studied and its simplest forms last, while only 

 through an acquaintance with the latter can a fundamental knowledge 

 of the former be obtained. The history of biological science furnishes 

 many striking illustrations of this truth, the most interesting of which 

 is perhaps to be found in the labors of the two great French savants, 

 Cuvier and Lamarck. The former spent his life and powers in the 

 study of vertebrate zoology, amid the most complex living organisms. 

 The latter devoted his energies to botany and to invertebr^e zoology, 

 including the protozoan and protistan kingdoms. The tormer founded 

 his great theory of types and his cosmology of successive annihilations 

 and reconstructions of the life of the globe. The latter promulgated 

 his theory of unbroken descent with modification. The conclusions of 

 the former were accepted in his day and are rejected in ours ; those of 

 the latter were condemned in his own lifetime, but now form the very 

 warp of scientific opinion. 



Let no botanist, therefore, or person contemplating the study of bot- 

 any, be deterred by the lowly nature of the objects he would cultivate. 

 The humblest flower or coarsest weed may contain lessons of wisdom 

 more profound than can be drawn from the most complicated conditions 

 of life or of mind. 



The city of Washington is becoming more and more a center, not 

 only of scientific learning and research, but also of art and every form 

 of liberal culture. Already the public schools have reached out and 

 taken botany into their curriculum, and we have seen that as a field for 



