26 JOURNAL OF THE 



riuraist now and then stumbles upon a useful fact, and in the 

 aggregate, taking the whole country into account, these discov- 

 eries amount to something; but that the discoveries are not com- 

 mensurate with the enero^v absorbed is a matter that admits of 

 no debate. 



As far as the average student is concerned, the study of plant 

 life may be rationally pursued for two purposes, namely: for 

 the mental discipline it affords and for the useful information it 

 furnishes bearing upon the aifairs of practical life. But the 

 average student is usually content to study his plants only just 

 so far as may be necessary to learn their names and proper 

 places in the herbarium. This sort of information is certainly 

 not practical, and as for the mental discipline it affords, after 

 the student has once got the 'Mvcy'^ well under control, it prom- 

 ises even less than whistling; for the whistler is often, greatly 

 to his moral and spiritual welfare, kicked by men and bitten by 

 dogs, whereas the herbariumist is too frequently the victim of 

 the undiscriminating and hurtful praise of the vulgar. The 

 only real use subserved by a collection of dried plants is that it 

 enables nomenclators to compare one species with another so as 

 to determine their relationship and position in the natural sys- 

 tem; and as a pendant to this, to preserve typical specimens for 

 the purpose of giving stability to botanical nomenclature. It is 

 necessary that plants should have distinctive and well recognized 

 names, so that they may be intellii^ently studied by diiferent 

 botanists and generations of botanists. But the herbariumist 

 works in a circle. He studies his plants for the purpose of 

 learning their names, notwithstanding that nomenclators have 

 already named them that they might be studied. 



Gray, Chapman, Vasey and Watson have so thoroughly sys- 

 tematized the nomenclature of American plants that very little 

 now remains to be done in that line, and that little can be done 

 only by botanists who have access to extensive museums and 

 libraries, such as no private collector can hope to own. Isolated 

 collectors can be of real service to the cause of science and 

 human progress only by placing their services at the command 



