72 TRANSACTIONS AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE  [Ssss. Lxix- 
of the time and labour spent on these as useless, if not worse. 
It assumes an antithesis between such collections and the 
biological study of plants. 
An opinion so expressed, the judgment of a committee of 
botanists themselves in the front rank of investigators in the 
science, might well be regarded as decisive ; and, in face of it, 
to speak of herbaria and local lists along with biology, might 
almost be regarded as quixotic or due to ignorance or 
prejudice. Yet I venture to hold that the preparation of 
herbaria and of local lists affords opportunities to do really 
excellent biological work; and that to undervalue, still more 
to give up, such work is to cut oneself off from an important 
and valuable means of botanical training and investigation. 
Botanists in the past gave too little heed to plants as living 
things, and valued too highly the ability to describe 
specimens in technical language and to name them fluently, 
as if that ability comprised the science, and botany suffered 
in consequence. But that should be a warning of the evil 
that must result from the failure to recognise that botany 
requires the services of many workers, and is built up of the 
results acquired along varied paths of investigation. All 
must ultimately suffer if any one part is undervalued and 
disparaged ; and at present there appears to be a considerable 
danger of the worth and true place of systematic and 
descriptive botany being overlooked in the reaction from the 
former tendency to regard them as almost alone worth study. 
My concern at present, however, is not to defend what will 
continue to be regarded as an essentially valuable part of 
botany, but to discuss for a little the place and worth of 
herbaria, and how they can be made most useful aids in the 
study of plants as living things. 
The views expressed by the committee appear to be based 
upon the estimate expressed in the words that a herbarium 
“finds its principal use in the authentication of botanical 
discoveries made in distant lands”; and this is supported by 
the following statements: “The habit of collecting plants 
for the herbarium may be hostile to the close study of the 
environment, and confirm the pernicious belief that the thing 
of chief importance is to be able to name a plant as soon as 
you see it.” “But there are things more advantageous and 
more appropriate to the first stage of botanical study than the 
