rEBEUAET 6, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



125 



present-day opportunity in botany, and the 

 opinion was voiced that it lies in the line of 

 large and special equipment opening fields 

 beyond the reach of the ordinary man. This 

 may really be so. Certainly the first men to 

 use tlie microscope were privileged beyond 

 their fellows: but as we look back on their 

 work they do not shine with a brilliancy cor- 

 responding to the greatness of this privilege. 

 Eather, they profited by it to the extent of 

 their knowledge and talent; made much or 

 little progress according to their possession 

 of these personal gifts; and have been sur- 

 passed by men who much after their day were 

 impelled and instructed to look deeper and 

 see further with the same instrument. 



The optimism which led me twenty-five 

 years ago to see hopeful opportvmity for every 

 man inspired by an all-compelling curious in- 

 terest in nature and natural phenomena leads 

 me still to see hopeful opportunity ahead of 

 every such man — proportioned to his talent 

 and under everyday environment rather than 

 dependent on the special and novel provision 

 which may fall to the lot of a fortunate in- 

 dividual here and there. 



Botany, as a science, grew out of the 

 gradually accumulated knowledge of plants 

 acquired through using and cultivating them. 

 The art of applying this knowledge really 

 underlay the science into which it has been 

 organized and fonnulated, though to-day it 

 rests upon this, which constitutes a firm 

 foundation in agriculture, medicine and the 

 varied fermentation industries. That its scope 

 should broaden, was as inevitable as that the 

 natural horizon should amplify for a man 

 climbing to a hilltop. That the mere selec- 

 tion of suitable subjects for microscopic study 

 should result in closer observation of all that 

 was looked at was equally natural. That Van 

 Helmont's demonstration that plants are not 

 built up out of earth should have preceded a 

 separate analysis of all possible sources of 

 their substance is self-evident. But discovery 

 of the large part that the atmosphere plays 

 in this organic synthesis, of the marvelous 

 organism that a vegetable cell proves to be, 

 and of the part played in heredity by some of 

 the parts of this unit organism of organisms, 



is seen to have resulted more from the in- 

 telligent ingenious use of means at hand than 

 from restricted privilege. 



If one were to lapse into momentary 

 pessimism in an optimistic review, the slip 

 would come from recognition of the in- 

 stinctive conservatism that inclines most of us 

 to see only a form of some well known plant 

 in a specimen that the inspired discoverer 

 knows and even describes as hitherto un- 

 known ; or that leads us to ignore as " dirt " 

 or artefacts the seemingly uncharacteristic 

 parts of our preparations — as Lohnis believes 

 that the most eminent bacteriologists have 

 done; or that leads to a wish that experi- 

 ments on living things were not so apt to 

 turn out differently from the predicted result. 

 We may destroy puzzling intermediates, throw 

 away disappointing preparations, or exclude 

 unsuccessful experiments from our calcula- 

 tions: but we do not explain them in doing 

 this — we merely evade the truth that they 

 mutely offer for our apprehension. It is the 

 exceptional man who, even if he lay them 

 aside for the time, as Haeckel, in his youth, 

 did the " bad " species of his herbarium, can 

 not rest imtil he understands them. 



This is the true pioneer type, not content 

 with what is believed to be the known nor 

 satisfied with little excursions beyond its 

 border, but boldly, in season and out of season, 

 pushing out into the unknown. Such incur- 

 sions, guided by the compass of correct meth- 

 ods and starting from the direction of ac- 

 quired knowledge, have been, are and seem 

 likely to conltinue to be, the epoch-making first 

 moves in scientific progress. 



Men who lead in such progress sometimes 

 set off with general approval and good wishes. 

 They follow the bent of their less enterprising 

 fellows. Even rumors of their achievements 

 are received at par and passed on at a pre- 

 mimn. Fortunate, then, for science, if the 

 log of their journey come back for verification, 

 for our average human tendency is to believe 

 what we want to believe, and those of us who 

 do not travel to the pole care for little more 

 than to be told that it has been reached by an 

 enterprising explorer when we confidently ex- 

 pected such an explorer to get there. 



