114 BULLETIN OF THE 



Of all the natural sciences, that of Botany is the most easily con- 

 verted into a branch of culture. Its objects appeal directly to the 

 highest esthetic faculties. It naturally allies itself with the arts of 

 drawing, painting, and sketching, and the deeper the insight into 

 its mysteries the stronger does it appeal to the imagination. Its 

 pursuit, besides being the best possible restorer of lost, and pre- 

 server of good health, is a perpetual source of the purest and live- 

 liest pleasure. The companionship of plants, which those who do 

 not know them cannot have, is scarcely second to that of human 

 friends. The botanist is never alone. Wherever he goes he is sur. 

 rounded by these interesting companions. A source of pure delight 

 even where they are familiarly known to him, unlike those of his 

 own kind, they grow in interest as their acquaintance grows less 

 intimate, and in all his travels they multiply immensely his re- 

 sources of enjoyment. 



The man of science wonders what the unscientific can find to 

 render travel a pleasure, and it must be confessed that a great many 

 tourists of both sexes go at the behest of fashion, and care little 

 more for nature when crossing the Alps than did Julius Ceesar, who 

 could only complain of the bad roads and while away the hours in 

 writing his grammatical treatise, De Analogia. While all forms of 

 natural science, so far from paralyzing the esthetic faculties, tend 

 powerfully to quicken them, that of Natural History and especially 

 of Botany awakens such an interest in Nature and her beautiful 

 objects, that those who have once tasted pleasure of this class may 

 well consider other pleasures insipid. 



But notwithstanding these attractions which Botany possesses 

 above other sciences, there exists among a small class of scientific 

 men a disposition to look down upon it as lacking scientific dignity, 

 as mere pastime for school-girls or fanatical specialists. This 

 feeling is most obvious among zoologists, some of whom affect to 

 disdain the more humble forms of life and the simplicity of the 

 tame and stationary plant. 



This sentiment, though now happily rare, is natural and really 

 constitutes what there is left of that proud spirit with which man 

 has ever approached the problems of Nature. His first studies 

 disdained even so complicated an organism as man himself, and 

 spent themselves in the pursuit of spiritual entities wholly beyond 

 the sphere of science. Later he deigned to study mind detached 

 from body and from matter, still later he attacked some of the 



