February 6, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



129 



they pepresent gradual aecomplislunent in both 

 directions. Nevertheless such practical results 

 have been reached within the memory of men 

 now living — many of them indeed through 

 men now with us. The methods of our science 

 are analytical, its application is educational: 

 both require time, and the applications of its 

 teachings tend to pass its results from the 

 questioning realm of science into the formu- 

 lated empiricism of an art. 



The world stress that we are passing through 

 has caused attention to be turned, as never be- 

 fore, toward science; and science and its 

 methods have received a utilitarian recogni- 

 tion never before accorded them. If botany 

 and its dependent arts have met practical ex- 

 pectation as chemistry and lihysics and their 

 dependent arts have, its hopeful activities are 

 assured quantitatively and qualitatively for 

 generations to come: if it has shown an in- 

 herent lack of the liability of these sciences, 

 in which application is almost synchronous 

 with discovery, an understanding of its slower 

 but none-the-less certain methods will secure 

 for it opportunity for equally honorable and 

 useful future advance; and if we think it has 

 been slow in response we must recog-nize that 

 like the plants with which it deals it requires 

 a period of tilth and growth between seeding 

 and harvest. 



Useful though it may be, until it shall have 

 become a finished work, fit companion for those 

 arts and lachievements now kept from oblivion 

 through the kind offices of the museum, it will 

 be a sorry day for this or any other science 

 when its prosecution proves to be dependent 

 upon the evident and immediate usefulness of 

 its discoveries. 



When the inspiratSon of the greatest of 

 modern botanists, Sachs, gave to botany some- 

 thing of the meaning that it now has, its place 

 in the educational world changed. Though 

 biological science from its more complex na- 

 ture fails to give the promise of unmistakable 

 and predictalble answer to experiment that the 

 physical sciences pledge and furnish, it took 

 place quickly and without question as one of 

 the foundation stones of the educational idea 

 v?hieh recognizes experimentation and observa- 



tion as of fundamental value in training the 

 human mind. 



Perhaps it was put to this use in the best 

 possible way and for the best possible reasons. 

 Its achievements for two generations show that 

 large results have come because of or despite 

 its incorporation into the curriculum of even 

 the secondary schools: the methods of using 

 it, at any rate, have been largely those believed 

 best calculated to make investigators of the 

 pupils who studied it. 



To some people, it has seemed from the first 

 that all who study a science can scarcely be 

 expected to become specialists in it. There is 

 no reason for surprise in the patent fact that 

 few of the myriads of students of botany dur- 

 ing the last half-century have become pro- 

 fessional botanists: investigators are born 

 rather than manufactured. There may be just 

 ground even for a growing feeling that in its 

 application to education, botany should ap- 

 pear in a different guise and with different ac- 

 cents from the same science as the investiga- 

 tor knows it. 



If we are wise and alert who wish to see bot- 

 any or even biology at large continue — as we 

 all must believe that it should — an element of 

 popular instruction, we must see that in the 

 school it regains that simple understandable 

 everyday relation with everyday life that its 

 vastly simpler precursor possessed ; that in the 

 college its more complex present-day relations 

 with life are made part of the equipment of 

 all of those who are to teach it in the schools 

 and to follow it into the university; and that 

 in the university its study is characterized by 

 a breadth of understanding and a scope of 

 vision commensurate with that refined spe- 

 cialization which marks the successful delver 

 after facts. 



This is a suggestive gathering. It is a ses- 

 sion of The Botanical Society of America, but 

 there are present many members of the Phyto- 

 pathological Society, of the American Society 

 of Naturalists, of organizations of ecologists 

 and geneticists, of fern students and of moss 

 students. Such organizations are meeting in 

 affiliation with the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, and members of 



