January 27, 1909 107 
justly called attention to a cardinal sin of the taxonomist—lack 
of field observation. And right here it is time to call attention 
to avery vital point. The radical gets all the abuse, and the 
conservative all the praise. In nine cases out of ten it is the 
conservative botanist who has had little field experience, while 
the “ebullitions of the taxonomic radicals” is directly traceable 
to a widening knowledge gained through observation of living 
plants, not dead and-dried ones. 
Granted that the methods of the taxonomist could be im- 
proved upon, he must necessarily continue to work for a long 
time to come just as he has done in the past—group things to 
the best of his ability as he finds them ready made in nature, or 
as they appear to him in visible form. He may experiment 
with plants, but one botanist or one generation of botanists can 
do only a very little at solving problems. 
A great hindrance to the proper advance of taxonomic bot- 
any at present is lack of revisionary work. ‘Things are hope- 
lessly muddled in nearly all of the large genera because species 
are described first by one man and then by another, with no uni- 
formity of procedure and no attempt to treat the subject as a 
whole. In the current numbers of the North American Flora, 
issued by the New York Botanical Garden, we have a remedy, 
but not a speedy enough one in many cases. But there is one 
serious defect in it, common to all works of more than local 
scope. - It is being done by eastern men, who are no more fitted 
to arbitrate upon western plauts than are western men to pro- 
nounce upon eastern plants, except that they have better libra- 
ries and larger collections to depend upon. 
In closing I may say that it has been a difficult matter to 
condense into these few pages such a large amount of matter, 
every bit of it of great interest, and much of which necessarily 
could not be quoted, but I felt that such an important contribu- 
tion should be brought more generally to the notice of botanists. 
Needless to state, the reference to ‘The Scientific American” on 
page 89 should read The American Naturalist. 
