86 EBYTHEA. 



abject and vulgar a mercenary that he prefers to do without 

 books, and without all other facilities for the upbuilding of 

 his department and the advancement of botany, rather than, 

 by asking for these things, remind his superiors of his official 

 existence, and so endanger his tenure of a lucrative office! 



; I sincerely hope that the man, whoever he may be, w^ho 

 made the confession thus published editorially to the world, 

 is somewhat better, more respectable scientifically, than the 

 short diagnosis makes him; but if he is really so little of a 

 true scientist, and is in such slavish fear of losing the ^'com- 

 mercial value '' of his office, then I venture to say that the 

 scorned ''politicians'* are fully worthy to be his superiors, 



and even that they might serve botany a good turn by declar- 

 ing vacant the office of such a botanist. 



But if the public commendation of this type of botanist is 

 to be deprecated, the attempt make of him a lineal and legi- 

 timate descendent of the ''scholarly recluse" of "the old 

 days," is more so. " This feeling is a survival from the old 

 days when the botanist was a scholarly recluse." I repeat it, 

 that proposition is most wonderful. This modern botanical 

 smatterer and political wire-puller who, by diplomacy, 

 obtains an office, from the holding of which botanical 

 experience and learning are an inference, has in him no 

 survivals of the feelings that were in scholarly and genuine 

 botanists. He is no more descended from this ancestry than 



the earth worm is descended from the eagle. 



We second, heartily, the commendation of the botanist of 

 the present who has " emerged from his herbarium den," and 

 who is occasionally seen in " cultivated fields " as well as in 

 ** thickets and out-of-the-way marshes;" but in the para- 

 graph whence I take these words, history is contradicted in 

 the assumption that this phase of botanical investigation is 

 of recent development. It was the method, precisely, of all 

 those immortal botanists, the great pre-Linnaeans. It is even 

 upon clear record that Linnaeus was the first man to describe 

 new species on herbarium materials alone, and that he w^as 

 sharply critized by some of his elders and betters for setting 



