662 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



worse.* It is significant that those races that are most preco- 

 cious are ultimately the least intelligent and progressive,! more 

 nearly resembling the lower orders of animal life, where the 

 young possess at birth nearly all the powers they ever attain, 

 and so are not educable to any great degree. It is to be feared 

 that overstimulation in numerous ways of children in American 

 homes and schools leads to early cessation of, and hence to an 

 ultimately inferior, physical and mental development. 



THE SCOPE OF BOTANY. 



BY GEOKGE J. PEIRCE, PH. D., 



ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF BOTANY AND VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY, 

 LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY. 



WE hear much talk nowadays about the new chemistry, the 

 new psychology, the new theology, even the new woman. 

 It is not my purpose to present in this paper any remarks which 

 could be styled " the new botany," for I hope that there is no new 

 botany. Every department of human inquiry should be plastic 

 enough to be modified by increasing knowledge, it should open 

 new fields for investigation, and its members should increase in 

 power. I feel that botany has been plastic, that the science has 

 grown through the years until now it has not merely men who 

 are actively seeking its development, but also those who are seek- 

 ing for knowledge in ways and by means that have never before 

 been employed, seeking for a knowledge not of facts only inter- 

 esting as many of these may be in themselves but seeking in 

 these facts, painfully and slowly accumulated, the evidences of 

 deeper things, of the great principles which govern the world. 

 The definition is a familiar one "botany is that science which 

 seeks to answer every reasonable question regarding plants" and 

 to many people botany is nothing more ; but I should not venture 

 to write upon this topic had I nothing more to say than this. 

 The botanist regards his plants not as an end, but as a means of 

 learning a little more about life. The human physiologist was 

 the first to try to penetrate the mystery of life ; later the animal 

 physiologist, studying lower forms than man, attacked the same 

 problem ; and still later, only within the last hundred years one 

 may say, the vegetable physiologist has come to the aid of the 

 other two. All three, studying the manifestations of life, are 



* Cf. Porter. The Physical Basis of Precocity and Dullness. St. Louis, 1893. 

 f Cf. Christopher. Handbook of the Illinois Society for Child-Study, vol. ii, No. 2, 

 pp. 109-114. 



