ELISHA MITCHELL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 35 



tion serves to check its vagrant wanderings. There are no 

 ^'cranks" in the ranks of botany! It guards also against mis- 

 use of the too often "fatal gift of expression," which so fre- 

 quently makes its possessor mistake words for things and asser- 

 tions for facts. An instructive example of what an exclusively 

 literary and metaphysical training may do for a highly gifted 

 man is seen in the career of the late Thomas Carlyle. Some 

 time before his death Mr. Carlyle, in reviewing his life-work, 

 made the following melancholy confession: "For many years it 

 has been one of my most constant regrets that no school-master 

 of mine had a knowledge of natural science so far, at least, as to 

 have taught me the names of the flowers and grasses that grow 

 by the wayside, and of the winged and wingless neighbors, who 

 in my walks are constantly greeting me with salutations which, 

 as things are, I cannot return." 



It would be an easy matter to extend this enumeration as far 

 as the orthodox thirteen, but these will suffice. 



Perhaps some one will exclaim, "Yes, it is no doubt a pleasant 

 thing to know by its proper name each wayside flower and tree, 

 but who can remember the barbarous and uncouth names of 

 botany?" Well, if one cannot at first remember the Latin 

 names applied to plants by scientific botanists and unscientific 

 pedants one can let scientific botany alone until one has devel- 

 oped some skill in observing plants and discriminating one spe- 

 cies from another. The need of a terminology more exact than 

 the common vernacular will become apparent and by that time 

 the student will have developed enthusiasm sufficient to enable 

 him to mem(n*ize the botanical vocabulary. At the beginning it 

 will serve just as well to use the common vernacular name or 

 even invent names for one's self. The name is the least impor- 

 tant thing one can learn about a plant, and it is not wise for the 

 beginner to exhaust his time and patience in trying to choose the 

 most proper of several possible and equally unintelligible names. 

 Rather he should study the structure and details of different 

 plants and seek to group them around common types, thus learn- 

 ing for himself the philosophy of the natural system. The 



