244 The Botanical Gazette. [September, 



a part of our training. The one desire which runs with 

 increasing purpose through all this well known history is to 

 reach eventually a natural system of classification. The one 

 obstacle in the way of gratifying this desire has been a lack 

 of knowledge. You remember the time when the knowledge 

 of affinities was so slight that no attempt even was made to 

 express relationships, and plants were simply systematically 

 pigeon-holed for future reference. The ingenuity of those 

 days was taxed to construct the most convenient pigeon-holes, 

 and to properly assign to them the hosts of plants, that were 

 clamoring for recognition. Those who could thus properly 

 assort a collection of plants, and could recognize when a new 

 pigeon-hole was needed, were known first as "botanists," 

 afterwards as "systematic botanists," an appellation proper 

 enough, but one unfortunately not having sufficiently out- 

 grown its original application. The unfortunate result of this 

 necessity to systematize facts so rigidly and thus render them 

 readily accessible was, as you well know, to make the pigeon- 

 holes as permanent as the facts they were intended tempor- 

 arily to contain. A convenience at first became at last a 

 tremendous hindrance, and we are even yet but slowly giving 

 up our firm belief in the reality of the ancient pigeon-hole 

 and its appropriate label. The fact is, that although our 

 belief in them is oozing out, our necessities still compel us to 

 use them ; but it is to be hoped that they are being relegated 

 rapidly to their proper position as conveniences, devices of 

 semi-ignorance, and not considered as actual facts. 



You also recall how knowledge presently became sufficient 

 to justify an attempt at natural arrangement, crude enough. 

 but still advanced enough to mark an epoch in progress ; and 

 the authors of these first "natural arrangements" understood 

 their own limitations better than any one else. One natural 

 arrangement has succeeded another, from that day to this. 



until in those of to-day we have presented to us simply what 

 the earliest contained, viz.; the expression of man's knowledge 

 of affinity; the difference being a slowly diminishing amount 

 of artificial padding. I need not suggest to you how exceed- 

 ingly imperfect that knowledge is yet. and how, of necessity, 

 the best of our present systems must meet the fate of those 

 that have -one before and become merely chapters in the 

 history of systematic botany. This becomes doubly apparent 

 when it is considered that "pigeon-holing' 3 is going on almost 



