I4th February, A. D. 1895. 



ESSAY 



BY 



Miss ARABELLA H. TUCKER, 



State Normal School, Worcester, Mass. 



Theme : — Trees of Worcester and Vicinity. 



In these modern days of amplification and extension in every 

 department of learning, and especiallj^ in that of science, when the 

 good old fences that used to define so exactly the fields of knowledge, 

 that in a fourteen weeks' course we could learn all there was to know 

 on any subject, have all been thrown down, the possibilities of 

 human attainment have come to seem almost boundless. Stimulating 

 as this is to the imagination, it is a little discouraging to the average 

 individual, who finds it impossible to keep up with the results even, 

 that are being attained by those who are working in special lines. 

 Only the teacher of a country high school in some very remote 

 district pretends to an acquaintance with astronomy, l)otany, chemis- 

 try, geology, zoology and the various other " ologies " that his 

 course of study requires him to teach ; and even he would not claim 

 to have a very comprehensive or exhaustive knowledge of any one of 

 these great subjects. The genuine scientific man in these days is a 

 specialist ; he gives his days and nights to investigation and study, 

 not only of a single subject, but often of a small subdivision only of 

 that subject ; witness the case of the enthusiast who devoted his 

 whole lifetime to a study of the crayfishes of South America. This 

 tendency to specialization, or rather this necessity for specialization, 

 is well shown in the modern scientific literature. The titles of the 

 books show their limited range. The latest book on Ornithology, for 

 example, " The Bird's Calendar," by H. E. Parkhurst, treats of the 

 birds actually seen month by month in Central Park, New York. 

 Another recent one is called, "The Hawks and Owls of the United 



