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potheses, or lead to the enunciation of any new principle. But 
science is most largely advanced by the thinkers in it, rather than 
the mere doers. Between the time of Linnaeus and that of A. 
P. De Candolle, botanists had so largely confined their labors to 
the mere accumulation of facts—to the description of “new or 
little known species,” that botany, as Sachs has pointed out, had 
practically ceased to be a science. But the labors of De Can- 
dolle were those of the thinker. He established the theory and 
laws of the natural system on such a firm basis that his work 
marks the beginning of a new epoch in the science. To cite one 
more instance, men had described and accumulated the facts of 
teratology for centuries before a scientific thinker made such facts 
one of the corner stones of a fruitful mutation theory. It was, 
no doubt, in conscious or unconscious recognition of this prin- 
ciple of the scientific value of ideas over mere facts that no voter 
suggested the name of any of the numerous herbalists as entitled 
to even a minor place on the building 
In conclusion, may the writer Sn that the autograph orig- 
inals of the ballots cast in the vote for names, preserved in the 
archives of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, may possibly greatly 
rejoice the heart of some future historian of botany. The great 
historian of our science, Sachs, has declared that “The position 
of a scientific man in relation to his science as a whole is cer- 
tainly most simply and clearly defined by his judgment on the 
merits of his contemporaries and predecessors.” But the future 
historian may, let us hope, be able to allocate men to positions 
of relative greatness, independent of all personal opinion or 
prejudice, on the basis of the new exact science, which Dr. Woods 
has christened “ historiometry.” 
t is a pleasure here to make public acknowledgement of in- 
debtedness to those who have so kindly codperated with the 
Brooklyn Botanic Garden in this choice of names; the courteous 
assistance thus rendered is most sincerely and gratefully ap- 
preciated. 
C. STUART GAGER. 
