i io BOTANY AND INTENSIVE CULTIVATION 



We claim not without reason to understand the 

 art of compromise. Now is the supreme moment 

 when we must put that art into practice. Misery 

 makes strange bedfellows, and in our present peril 

 peril of ourselves less than peril of a slave State 

 such as Germany liberty, taught consideration, 

 and discipline, dignified by intelligence, must learn 

 to run in double harness. In our own sphere we 

 might well make a beginning by calling a friendly 

 truce between the big-endians and little-endians of 

 Classics and Science. For if the protagonists were 

 to confer instead of to contend they would discover 

 that in the ample years of leisure which our youth 

 enjoy there is room in plenty for both classical 

 and scientific education. In such a spirit of 

 sweet reasonableness the scientific and the classico- 

 clerical might proceed together to a reform of our 

 system of education from top to bottom. There 

 is room for it. It is essential that our statesmen 

 and administrators, our teachers and our poets 

 know something of the work and method and 

 beauty of science. It is no less essential that the 

 men of science of the coming generation should be 

 cultivated citizens as well as competent specialists. 



It is not, however, the purpose of this volume, 

 as I conceive it, to give occasion to sundry men 

 of science to lament at large; but rather, each in 

 his proper sphere, to review the special subject 

 which on this occasion he is privileged to represent 

 and to endeavour to discover and suggest means 



