l8 9i-J The Future of Systematic Botany. 247 



botanists ; and I can explain it only by the fact that it is the 

 oldest representative of the science, or that it so frequently 

 stands for all of botanical science in the popular mind, and 

 this popular verdict is resented. With this last position I am 

 thoroughly in sympathy, and it is perfectly proper for the 

 public mind to be disabused and made to understand that 

 botany is a science of living things and not merely of mum- 

 mies; but this can be best done by treating courteously the 

 ancient and ever to be present and necessary work of collec- 

 tion and description. Such workers are curators of botanical 

 material upon an extensive scale, a function that, properly 

 exercised, requires a skill and patience that few possess, but 

 that many assume. 



I grant that the discovery and description of new species is 

 such an inspiring pursuit that it may degenerate into a mania, 

 and sometimes into kleptomania ; but the worst of it is that it 

 attracts many who are wholly incompetent, and who have 

 burdened our literature with rubbish that is both discreditable 

 and confusing; but this can be no more true of this than of 

 any other phase of botany or scientific work. 



I do not desire to be understood as defending this kind of 



botanical work, f 



mine ; but simply, 



in view of certain fraternal thrusts that have been given, less 

 frequently now than formerly, to call attention to the fact 

 that this is one of the living and necessary kinds of botanical 

 work, subject, like all other kinds, to degradation at the 

 hands of its friends. 



' While I have spoken of this phase of botanical work as the 

 most ancient, and one which, like the poor, we are always to 

 have with us, I by no means intended to imply that its meth- 

 ods cannot be improved. It must have long since occurred 

 to some that many things besides th mere sporadic collection 

 and recording of species should be included as legitimately 

 belonging to this line of research. It is the common plan to 

 collect and record a plant in such an isolated way that it be- 

 comes a text without any context, and is thus robbed of much 

 of its significance. Collectors send in from the field large- 

 amounts of miscellaneous material, and usually the only ac- 

 companying information is a locality, mostly very indefinite, 



and a date. In some ca^es the size and habit is appended, 



and possibly some local economic note. I take it that this 



