THE SCOPE OF BOTANY. 663 



seeking to solve the puzzle, What is life itself ? With such an 

 aim, the science of botany is more than a pleasant recreation for 

 a summer holiday, it is more than a little accomplishment which 

 can be taught in a finishing school for girls, it is even more than 

 the sentimental or the poetic or the artistic contemplation of the 

 beautiful as displayed in the rose and the lily. The botanist is 

 devoting his time, his energy, his ability (if he has any) to the 

 study of plants not because " it must be so lovely to be always 

 studying flowers," as I have heard so often to my great discom- 

 fort, but that he may learn something that will help his fellows 

 in their everyday lives, give them some truer notion of the 

 physical life, and reveal to them some of the principles that 

 underlie it all. 



This sounds very fine, but how is the botanist doing all this > 

 and what is the evidence that he has even begun to do some of 

 this ? The beginning of botany in this country, so far as the 

 white settlers are concerned, was coincident with the first explor- 

 ing expeditions, when the hardy pioneers made note of the vege- 

 tation, whether it was luxuriant or sparse, whether the plants 

 were poisonous, useless, or useful. That even then a better and 

 more general knowledge of the flora was deemed important, is 

 proved by the record that at the college at Newtowne, founded in 

 1636 and now known as Harvard University, the study of plants 

 was part of the curriculum in every summer term. To learn the 

 names and the striking properties, useful or harmful, of the 

 plants of a new country is the most natural endeavor of those 

 who are to make it their home. From that time until now, it has 

 been the custom to teach in the schools, and in many of the col- 

 leges, just these things. Because most of us go no further in our 

 study of plants, we conclude that this must be all. The school 

 boy and girl painfully learn the descriptive nomenclature, as we 

 find it set forth with wonderful clearness in Gray's Text-book of 

 Botany that leaves are linear or obcordate or punctate with 

 pellucid dots ; that stamens are distinct or hypogynous or tetra- 

 dynamous ; and then they find that the bird-foot violet is tech- 

 nically known as Viola pedata and the lily of the valley Con- 

 vallaria majalis. But the school boy and girl have thus simply 

 acquired one means of learning more of Nature. Botany is not a 

 science of names, a science overloaded with names though it may 

 be. The individual who destroys a flower by tearing it to pieces 

 (analyzes it, as the ladies say), and finds by the aid of some tire- 

 some artificial key the Latin name of the plant which bears it, 

 has conquered the difficulties of the botanical alphabet ; but until 

 he goes further he knows absolutely nothing of the literature of 

 Nature. Children now learn to read before they learn the alpha- 

 bet, and in many of our better schools the pupils begin to study 



