252 On the Campus 



proved appliances, or facilities, or opportunity he is rea- 

 sonably certain that he can add materially to the sum of 

 facts already known. For instance, much is known con- 

 cerning the behavior of the dividing nucleus in the cells 

 of the higher plants : no one desires to repeat the work of 

 investigators in this field unless some new reagent, some 

 new method of treatment, some new lens may give prom- 

 ise of affording new light in fields already well explored. 

 The would-be investigator must know the existing state 

 of knowledge if he would not in large measure waste his 

 time and lose his pains. 



But there is still another demand for the widest kind 

 of knowledge; the research student must know his sub- 

 ject thoroughly in order wisely to select, in order to ren- 

 der his contribution in the highest degree useful to the 

 particular science he affects and so to the science of the 

 world. A man has been known to spend a life-time upon 

 a problem which when solved forwards in no least par- 

 ticular the general purpose and sweep of the science, nor 

 aids in any way whatever his fellow-workers in that par- 

 ticular field. There stands in my library a volume of 

 more than a thousand closely printed quarto pages. It 

 represents the entire life-work of a most diligent and 

 painstaking student; yet it is all practically labor taken 

 in vain. It attempts to record the first naming of every 

 known plant in all recorded literature the chronologi- 

 cal history of plants. Now the volume is a mass of 

 curious erudition, a lore culled from all the languages 

 ever written among men, yet to-day no one every quotes 

 that volume, no one seems ever to find occasion to refer 

 either to the author or his work, his labor brings no 



