42 Kansas Academy of Science. 



species in dozens of manuals of botany for the nse of students and other 

 naturalists. 



The reports of this Academy of Science show in nearly every volume 

 that the botanists of Kansas M^ere deeply interested in doing their part in 

 the work of cataloging the plants of the state. 



In volumes I, II, III, V and VII, Prof. J. H. Carruth catalogs 1,437 

 species, of which 71 were not found east of the Mississippi river. Among 

 those who assisted Professor Carruth in this work were Professors Snow, 

 Hall, Popenoe and several others. In volume VIII, Professor Carruth in- 

 creases the number of species of plants higher than the mosses in Kansas 

 to 1,473. 



The interest aroused in plants through the making of a complete list of 

 the plants of the state, and the description of new species, very naturally 

 led to an interest in the life history of the plants collected. This in turn 

 caused the botanists to place increasing emphasis on the medicinal, tex- 

 tile and food value of plants to man. 



In volume X, Prof, and Mrs. W. A. Kellerman furnish an excellent 

 key to the forest trees of Kansas based on the leaves and fruit, and in 

 volume XI, Professor Kellerman gives a key to the Kansas grasses. In 

 the same volume. Prof. W. T. Swingle gives a list of the parasitic fungi 

 of Kansas together with the names of their host plants. In volume XII, 

 Professor Swingle m.akes corrections to his list of parasitic fungi, and 

 B. B. Smyth corrects Professor Carruth's list and adds some five hun- 

 dred new names. The revised list contains 1,666 flowering plants, 40 

 ferns and filicoid plants and 96 mosses. In volume XIII, B. B. Smyth 

 increased these numbers to 1,790 flowering plants, 40 ferns and filicoid 

 plants, 108 mosses, 3 algae, 7 sapropytic fungi, 1 liverwort and 8 par- 

 asitic fungi. To the last must be added 458 parasitic fungi listed in 

 various volumes by Professors Kellerman, Carleton and Swingle. In 

 1910 and 1912, B. B. Smyth and his wife, Mrs. L. C. R. Smyth, presented 

 to the Academy their completed lists of the plants of Kansas. These 

 await publication, excepting the part listing the sporophytes. Two very 

 important papers on plants were published in volume XIV. One by 

 Prof. A. S. Hitchcock listed the grasses of Kansas, and one by Miss 

 Minnie Reed described with illustrations the mosses of Kansas and fur- 

 nished a key for their identification. With the presentation of these lists 

 of plants to the Academy the period of intense activity by an enthusiastic 

 band of naturalists came to a close. They did their work well, and their 

 untiring zeal in cataloging the flora of Kansas made the science of botany 

 for our state possible. 



While the work of studying and listing the flora of a state is intensely 

 intei-esting to naturalists, it proved to be just the reverse to the pupils 

 in the public schools and colleges. The naturalists invented and used 

 three hundred and fifty descriptive terms. These were truly Greek and 

 Latin to the boys and girls and they rebelled at the task of learning and 

 applying them. The attempt to force morphological botany on the schools 

 has resulted in failure, and the pupils and teachers were right, for mor- 

 phological botany has as little juice in it as a sucked orange, and it has 

 by itself almost no educational value. 



