Semi-Centennial Volume. 41 



of the work has indeed changed, but there exists even a greater need of 

 scientific investigation, and in many more lines than in the early days of 

 the state, and this need will increase as our civilization becomes more 

 complex. We now have state boards, commissions, etc., that make their 

 reports through different channels, but in each of these there are ques- 

 tions without number of a purely scientific character, that find no place 

 in such reports. Such questions should continue to be worked out in our 

 meetings and the results published in our Transactions. The work in 

 botany has changed to the search for or breeding up of plants better 

 adapted to our economic needs, and to combatting injurious parasitic 

 forms. The immediate, usable results of such work would of course be 

 given to the people in bulletins, but the scientific investigations should 

 not be lost. These should find a place in our transactions. In the most 

 ordinary experiment in plant breeding, even one that produces no com- 

 mercial result of value, often some exceedingly important new facts in 

 heredity ai-e brought to light that should be given publicity. Then there 

 are numberless new developments just ahead of us. What thoughtful 

 person who considers the development in the cement industry, with its 

 almost revolutionary effect on engineering and architectural construc- 

 tion, will dare to say that we have reached the limit of our mineral re- 

 sources? Yet this is a thing of the present, undreamed of when the 

 Academy was organized. Our clays have only begun to yield their 

 wealth, and in every line we are merely at the beginning of our develop- 

 ment of mineral resources. In engineering there is an immense field 

 opening. We, in Topeka, are still buying ten-cent electricity, while the 

 Kansas river is carrying by each day enough of the same article, at two 

 cents, to supply our every need and add greatly to the comfort of living. 

 Irrigation, conservation and control of flood waters, are also problems of 

 the immediate future. There is no lack of room for work for such an 

 organization ; indeed, the amount and variety of work pushing to the 

 front is so great as to be almost bewildering. It is clear to me that the 

 Kansas Academy of Science has a gi-eater opportunity to do beneficial 

 work for the state now than it has ever before had, and this opportunity 

 will increase with the years. If the Academy in its new environment can 

 demonstrate its ability and willingness to do this work efficiently and 

 can devise some plan for prompt publication, there need be no question of 

 its success during its second fifty years. 

 Washburn College, Topeka. 



Botany in Kansas During the Past Fifty Years. 



Lyman C. Wooster. 



The collecting naturalists of the nineteenth century made the science of 

 botany possible during the twentieth. It was a labor of love on their part, 

 for the enthusiasm engendered by the discovery of new impedes of plants 

 has sent many a botanist through swamps, deserts and over mountains 

 in the search for specimens. Gray, Torrey, Wood and a hundred other 

 pioneers in this fascinating field of work listed the plants of Europe, 

 America and other continents and published the descriptions of the 



