34 MEMOIRS OF THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN 



hundred men completed the beginning course in botany. Of 

 those who continued the work in the higher courses by far the 

 largest number entered schools of sanitary engineering, agriculture, 

 landscape architecture, and forestry, while those contented to 

 continue in purely botanical work were few indeed. It is probably 

 not far from the truth to say that 99 per cent, of the men who com- 

 pleted the work of the department during those nine years repre- 

 sented a commercialized product. 



From this eagerness of the undergraduate to turn botanical 

 training into dollars and cents has come a constant pressure to 

 shift our standard, and to revise our courses, introducing the 

 practical as we chose to call it, and thus making our courses inter- 

 esting. Much of our college work, therefore, has become an 

 hotchpotch of commercial, and a smattering of foundational, 

 botany. 



As a guiding factor to this tendency I would make an appeal 

 for a strong and vigorous training in scientific botany in our 

 colleges. During the last few years, for reasons already indi- 

 cated, I have experienced a strong and growing pressure to intro- 

 duce more and more work of a practical nature into the beginning 

 courses, but thus far at least I have persistently held to my idea 

 of what a foundational course ought to be, namely; a thorough 

 training in the morphology of as many representatives as possible 

 from the great groups of plants, together with a limited discussion 

 of their economic importance and their physiology. There is no 

 more excellent road for the beginner to a good knowledge of the 

 seed plants than the complete mastery of such a text as Gray's 

 Structural Botany, followed by a thorough drill in analysis. 



Let no one suppose that I am inclined to discourage the prospec- 

 tive landscape architect, or the scientific agriculturalist, or the 

 sanitary engineer, or that I do not appreciate the splendid work 

 which the various branches of applied botany have accomplished 

 in recent years. But I do insist that men so trained are not in 

 any way to be classified as botanists, that their work is not botany, 

 and that the science must be protected against the tremendous 

 pressure of the college student who is all too willing to jilunge 

 directly into commercial botany, before any adequate foundation 

 has been laid. 



The sec(;n(l problem to which botanists should devote greater 



