SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 940 



individual learning and efficiency. Botan- 

 ical science whicli should have guided and 

 directed these laudable applications has 

 not kept pace with them, and we have the 

 spectacle of these economic botanists, phys- 

 iologists, pathologists, plant breeders and 

 others working apart from the botanists 

 proper, and sometimes even disclaiming 

 any allegiance to the parent science. Noth- 

 ing but confusion and disaster can result 

 from such a condition. 



Lack of Cooperation. — Contrary to what 

 is sometimes affirmed, botanists are still 

 studying the flora of the country. In some 

 quarters there has been expressed the fear 

 that field botany has disappeared from the 

 schools and colleges ; but this is far from 

 true. While it no longer claims the larger 

 part of the student's attention, it is still an 

 essential part of the training of every bot- 

 anist, and it is probably true that in some 

 cases there is even more field work required 

 to-day of young botanists than its impor- 

 tance demands. Certainly in one kind of 

 field work I should like to see some of the 

 energy and ability now given to the dis- 

 covery of means for splitting old species 

 turned towards the solution of problems 

 pertaining to growth, and development, 

 and reproduction. But the careful field 

 study of what plants grow here and there, 

 and why they do so, is greatly to be com- 

 mended. The sociology of plants, or as we 

 call it, ecology, has given in the last few 

 years a new reason, as well as a new direc- 

 tion to field botany. 



The systematic botany of to-day con- 

 tinues to concern itself more with the dis- 

 tinction of species than with their origin, 

 and this has brought to this department 

 of the science an increased narrowness 

 which has greatly injured its usefulness. 

 On the other hand plant breeding, which 

 should be the experimental phase of sys- 

 tematic botany, has had no connection with 



it. And strangely, systematic botany, 

 which should welcome plant breeding as an 

 ally in its quest as to the meaning and 

 origin of species, has been scarcely at all 

 interested. It has been left to the florists, 

 the horticulturists and the agronomists to 

 patronize the new phase of botany, and 

 this they have done, in spite of the new 

 and quite unnecessarily formidable termin- 

 ology so rapidly developed by the breeders. 

 So what might have proved to be one of the 

 most helpful aids to the solution of the 

 greatest of biological problems — how living 

 things have come to be what they are — is 

 allowed to fret out its life by beating 

 vainly against the technical bars of its 

 Mendelian cage. I know of no better illus- 

 tration of the unorganized condition of 

 botanical science than this failure of the 

 systematic botanists and the plant breeders 

 to work together for a common end. 



THE BOTANY OP TO-MOEROW 



But I have dwelt enough upon the past 

 and the present, and I feel inclined to 

 apologize to you for having turned your 

 faces so long backward. For while we 

 must consider what has been, we can make 

 progress only by planning for what is to 

 be. So let us turn now to the future of 

 botanical science, and endeavor to trace its 

 more profitable course of development dur- 

 ing the next one or two decades. What are 

 seemingly to be the demands of modern 

 society upon this science? What are to be 

 some of the next steps in its evolution? 

 For whatever we may say in regard to the 

 independence of science we can not escape 

 the fact that it must serve its "day and 

 generation. ' ' No science can hope for sup- 

 port or recognition that does not respond 

 to the demands of its age. And yet we 

 must not ignore the labors of those pioneers 

 in every science who foresee possibilities 

 that are hidden from the mass of men. 



