1897] OPEN LETTERS 59 
described and catalogued, then and not till then will it be possible to 
trace their relationships and to express their true affinities by means 
of a thoroughly well considered natural classification. The student who 
concerns himself alone with the higher plants cannot appreciate the dif- 
ficulties that still remain to be surmounted before this highly desirable end 
can be attained, or there would be fewer to criticise the efforts of those who 
are doing what is well understood to be preliminary work, but work that is 
just as essential to botanical progress as that which is to follow. Those of 
us who are attempting to work with these perplexing and almost innumer- 
able forms, and are therefore in a position to judge of the immensity of this 
field and the utterly inadequate study it has so far received, are compelled to 
smile when we hear some young anatomist or physiologist gravely assert that 
“work in systematic botany is practically finished in this country.”” It seems 
to be the fashion in some quarters to decry all field workers as “mere collec- 
tors ;’’ and I have even seen the assertion that the time has passed when 
amateurs, or those who were not able to devote their whole time to botanical 
study, could hope to do any work that would be of real service to botanical 
progress. I cannot help thinking that these are narrow views, and that their 
publication tends to work harm by discouraging those who feel attracted by 
botanical studies. The busy man, whose love of nature compels him to spend 
his Sundays and holidays in the woods and fields, often gains that intimate 
knowledge of plants as they really are, and of their relationship to their 
environment that is sometimes sadly lacking in the professional botanist 
whose horizon is bounded by his laboratory walls. The true scientific spirit 
is that which utilizes every scrap of knowledge, no matter how humble the 
source, and encourages by every means possible the widest spread of the 
Spirit of exact observation.—F. S. EARLE, Alabama Polytechnic Institute, 
Auburn, Ala. 
