4 
The American Midland Naturalist 
PUBLISHED BI-MONTHLY BY THE UNIVERSITY 
OF NOTRE DAME, NOTRE DAME, INDIANA 
WAGNER Wate NOVEMBER, 1921. NO. 6. 
Recent Botanical Publications from the United States National Museum 
BY THEO. HOLM 
We are so accustomed to receive voluminous reports “for 
the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men” that 
we have almost ceased to ask ourselves what is meant by 
knowledge. What is knowledge or not knowledge depends of 
course on the point of view. Some are still holding the view 
that knowledge constitutes something more than what is 
being brought forth by recent discoveries; that it embodies 
also a thorough, faithful appreciation of the work of our 
old masters; others are so easily contented that anything 
“in print” bearing a title of something new and scientific 
strikes them as knowledge. Still a third class of knowledge 
seems to exist, one which pretends to be so, but which actually 
contributes nothing either old or new, and goes even so far 
as to belittle the labors of honest investigators. 
As far as botany is concerned, botanical knowledge rests, 
and will always rest upon a structure of the past, and surely 
the floral kingdom has in itself a claim to be our safest guide 
to serious work. It would, so to speak, be almost beyond our 
‘ken to imagine that botanical science should ever suffer abuse 
in the hands of the vulgar.—And he is not a botanist, who 
does not honor the science as a precious gift, rendered’ acces- 
sible to us by such brilliant men as Linné, Lamarck, De 
Candolle, Elias Fries, Lindley, Robert Brown, Kunth and 
many others. In the writings of these men we have an 
absolute proof of the conscientious way, in which they 
worked; they worked for the science itself, by a method purely 
scientific. Small as were the means with which they worked, 
simple and modest their aspirations, but grand their results. 
For sincerity was at the bottom of it all. 
Scientific discoveries carry great weight as a contribution 
