166 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 292. 



genuine botanical contribution attacking the 

 problem continually from a new standpoint 

 adds its iota to this desired end. The un- 

 dergraduate course of botany therefore to 

 attain its best success either as a prepara- 

 tion for life or as a preparation for botanical 

 or biological research should not commence 

 the fad for specialization too early. It ought 

 thoroughly to familiarize the student with 

 the common types of plants not alone in the 

 laboratory and in pickle but in their living 

 freshness in the field. The broadest as well 

 as the most intimate acquaintance with as 

 wide an array as possible is none too much. 

 Besides the four hundred plants of the 

 higher type that Eaton recommended as a 

 minimum, the student of to-day ought to 

 know half as many at least from the array 

 of lower plants which in Eaton's time were 

 a world almost unknown. And all this 

 should be in hand in addition to the best 

 attainable methods of study with the means 

 of using to the best advantage the modern 

 implements of research from the simple lens 

 and the dissecting needles which should not 

 be neglected, to the microtome and the 

 various culture media. Following this, the 

 research course for those who really expect 

 to be botanists, to attain its highest results 

 ought to involve some phase of systematic 

 botany, for otherwise the student confining 

 himself to too narrow lines is still in danger 

 of losing his perspective. I do not mean 

 systematic botany in its old-fashioned 

 narrow sense but in its newer and broader 

 sense in which morphology, embryology, 

 and the widest application of accessory 

 study in culture house, laboratory and field 

 is brought to bear on the solution of a tax- 

 onomic problem. 



The line of research study that is pri- 

 marily embryological ought not to be con- 

 fined to a single type, but should involve 

 the comparative study of the types of a 

 family or in the case of restricted families 

 the relations to outliers in others. If the 



major line of research involves the life his- 

 tory of a species among the lower plants, it 

 ought also to involve a comparative study 

 of the allied American species, for no one 

 could be better prepared to monograph a 

 genus than one who from his studies of de- 

 velopment understands the significance of 

 morphological and structural characters, 

 their degree of variation, and their cause. 

 We have had enough of these studies of 

 single things without bearings or relations, 

 made by candidates for a degree whose 

 botanical work is sure to end with the 

 theses that they have been able to produce 

 with the bolstering aid of their instructor, 

 studies that mean nothing because the 

 workers failed to grasp the real purpose of 

 the study and its true relations and bear- 

 ing on the general subject. It is too late 

 to accept candidates for degrees in botany, 

 who seek the degree as an ignominious end 

 rather than a well-earned beginning and 

 preparation for future work along botanical 

 lines. Whatever we may be obliged to do 

 with and for those who take undergraduate 

 work in botany because they have to, we 

 have no time for graduate triflers or any 

 who are not intent on making botany their 

 life work — who study botany not because 

 it is a present fad or because thej' really 

 think they have to study something, but 

 because they are botanists born and must 

 become botanists trained. Such will find 

 their thesis the beginning of a series of re- 

 searches instead of the swan song of a neo- 

 phyte. In order to limit a wide subject more 

 closely and continue our consideration of 

 fields opening up to the trained botanical 

 student, we may turn in particular to the 

 field of work that lies open to the systematic 

 botanist in America. For the higher plants 

 I can do no better than to quote a recent 

 remark of my successor in ofiice, whose per- 

 sonal studies give to his opinion far greater 

 weight than any words of mine, that there 

 is scarcely a large genus represented in 



