October 20, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



555 



debted for additions to our knowledge of 

 the plant-life. Advantage has sometimes 

 been taken of a government expedition to 

 which a medical man with a knowledge of 

 or taste for natural history, or, in rare 

 cases, a trained botanist, has been attached. 



The specimens brought home by the ama- 

 teur collector often leave much to be de- 

 sired, and little or no information is given 

 as to the precise locality or the nature of 

 the locality, the habit of the plant, or other 

 items of importance or interest. There may 

 be indications that the plant is of economic 

 value, but no information as to whether it 

 is rare or plentiful, local or occurring over 

 a wide area. 



Samples of wood are often brought, but 

 generally without any means of identifica- 

 tion except a native name; and it must be 

 borne in mind that native names are apt to 

 be misleading ; they may be invented on the 

 spur of the moment to satisfy the white 

 man's craving for information, or when 

 genuine are often applied to more than one 

 species. 



A large proportion of the more extensive 

 collections are due to German enterprise, 

 and the best representation of this work is 

 naturally to be found in Germany, though 

 it is only fair to state that the German bot- 

 anists have been generous in lending ma- 

 terial for work or comparison. The bo- 

 tanical investigation of German East 

 Africa and the Cameroons has been carried 

 out by well-trained botanists and collectors, 

 and the results of their work published 

 both from botanical and economic points of 

 view. I may refer to the large volume on 

 German East Africa, which contains not 

 only a general account of the vegetation 

 and a systematic list of the genera and spe- 

 cies comprising the flora, but also an ac- 

 count of the plants of economic value 

 classified according to their uses. The ex- 

 ploration of the Belgian Congo has been 

 seriously undertaken by the Belgian gov- 



ernment, and a number of large and exten- 

 sively illustrated botanical memoirs have 

 been issued. Some of us may be familiar 

 with the fine Congo Museum near Brussels. 



It is time that pioneer work gave place to 

 systematic botanical exploration of our 

 tropical possessions and the preparation of 

 handy working floras and economic hand- 

 books. Work of botanical exploration 

 should be full of interest to the young bot- 

 anist. But if he is to make the best use of 

 time and opportunity he must have had a 

 proper course of training. After complet- 

 ing his general botanical course, which 

 should naturally include an introduction to 

 the principles of classification, he should 

 work for a time in a large herbarium and 

 thus acquire a knowledge of the details of 

 systematic work and also of the general out- 

 lines of the flora of the area which he is to 

 visit later. He should then be given a defi- 

 nite piece of work in the botanical survey 

 of the area. From the collated results of 

 such work convenient handbooks on the bo- 

 tanical resources of regions open to British 

 enterprise could be compiled. There will 

 be plenty of work for the systematist who 

 can not leave home. The ultimate elabora- 

 tion of the floristic work must be done in 

 the herbarium with its associated library. 

 There is also need of a careful monographic 

 study of genera of economic value which 

 would be best done by the experienced 

 systematist at home, given a plentiful sup- 

 ply of carefully collected and annotated 

 material. An example of such is the syste- 

 matic account of the species of Sanseviera 

 by Mr. N. E. Brown, recently issued at 

 Kew. Closely allied, or varieties of one and 

 the same, species may differ greatly in eco- 

 nomic value, and the work of the monog- 

 rapher is to discover and diagnose these 

 different forms and elucidate them for the 

 benefit of the worker in the field. 



If we are to make the best use of our 

 resources, botanical research stations in dif- 



