UTAH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 101 
SOME PROBLEMS FOR UTAH BOTANISTS. 
By M. RICH PORTER. 
The object of this paper is not to announce the dis- 
covery of some hitherto unknown principle, nor the results 
of months of diligent research. That must be left to those 
who do not have so great a variety of subjects to teach 
and to keep conversant upon. It is my desire, rather, to 
refer to some of the possibilities of the science of Botany 
in our state, and to appeal for a more generous encourage- 
ment of the subject, thereby increasing its scope of useful- 
ness. 
The first great problem of the local botanist is to 
raise the science from a position of minor importance in 
the average mind to one equal to Chemistry, Mathematics 
or English. The trend of education is so intensely toward 
the directly practical that we are apt not to give science 
for science’s sake the consideration to which it is entitled. 
If I were to condense public sentiment, as often expressed, 
to a definition, I would say that Botany is a something, 
feminine in gender, ornamental in usefulness, subnormal 
in intellect to be used only by the ladies. That one is a 
botanist is in many parts a confession that one is either 
mentally weak or lazy. The conventional Professor Bump- 
kins of the “Merry Widow” with his squeaky voice, ill- 
fitting clothes, eccentric ways, dancing through the fields, 
after every posy or butterfly, gabbling silly nonsense with 
children, has not been conducive to the serious considera- 
tion of Botany as a science. We need more of the scholar, 
hard at work in his laboratory, patiently determining the 
divine principles of life, or solving the many practical prob- 
lems of the community, finding out the proper control of 
crown galls, tomato blights and the nature of new osmotic 
relations. We need more generous equipment for the in- 
structors in our high schools—not that I would install 
college work there, but that the courses might not take the 
form of elementary nature-study or theoretic text-book 
recitation; and then, after that, a higher grade of effi- 
ciency among the teachers themselves. The ability to pass 
