August 3, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



167 



America that is not in real need of revision, 

 and surely the unparalleled activity of 

 recent workers in this field not alone in the 

 west and south, where novelties were more 

 naturally to be expected, but even in New 

 England and other parts of the Northeast, 

 would seem fully to justify the assertion. 

 Intelligent field study of which we need 

 much more by trained botanists rather than 

 by untrained field collectors is yielding its 

 natural and legitimate fruit. And long be- 

 fore our ecologists can attain definite point 

 to their labors we must know with far 

 greater precision than now the definite lim- 

 itation of the species of our higher flora. 



When we turn to the lower plants we 

 find a still more virgin field in which to 

 sound the call for able workers ; here not 

 only is the need of revision real, but it is 

 crying and in some cases almost shrieking 

 in its need. Among the fungi the desul- 

 tory description of species ' supposed to be 

 new ' must give way to careful revision, 

 genus by genus and family by family. Field 

 work and culture methods must supplement 

 the most searching comparative study of 

 the widest accessible array of material, and 

 while it will certainly result in great reduc- 

 tions of species carelessly described by the 

 older methods and in the correction of many 

 errors of over-hasty reference of American 

 species to those of European origin, it will 

 also result in bringing to light many that 

 by the same methods have been entirely 

 overlooked. We could at once place twenty 

 men carefully trained for research at work 

 on as many groups of fungi in which our 

 definite knowledge is only a hazy mass of 

 crude and scattered bits of information 

 needing to be brought into harmony with 

 the results of careful consecutive compara- 

 tive study. And beyond matter of the defi- 

 nite limitation of the species within the 

 genus and the genus within the family, 

 there are beyond and more far reaching in 

 their scope the most important questions 



of alliances and origin of groups that de- 

 mand the highest efforts of the most careful 

 workers. 



Among the Algse the conditions are still 

 worse, particularly among many fresh water 

 forms, for here not only are our species in 

 a haze of uncertain definition, but the very 

 characters to be used in specific definition 

 in many groups still remain to be formu- 

 lated. 



To accomplish this systematic study of 

 our fiora successfully will require the active 

 co-operation of field botanists and special 

 students. No longer can one man or a few 

 men seek to realize the complete definition 

 of even the higher flora much less the lower. 

 There must be the most complete and 

 candid co-operation on every hand. To 

 this end we offer a few suggestions. 



1. More and more the real systematic 

 study of our flora must proceed from the 

 centers where are gathered the stores of 

 material and among these centers there 

 ought to be the freest possible interchange 

 of courtesies. Isolated workers in the field 

 whose training is such that their judgment 

 regarding specific limitation is worthy of re- 

 spect, before attempting to publish their re- 

 sults should supplement their field and 

 home study by an occasional year or at the 

 very least frequent long vacations at some 

 one of the centers where contact with books 

 and types and still more with other workers 

 and methods would correct their results and 

 stimulate to better eflbrt. 



2. More and more the local field workers 

 and amateurs should realize that as isolated 

 facts are worthless until brought into har- 

 mony with some general law, so material 

 illustrating the distribution and variation 

 of certain plants is only valuable when de- 

 posited where it is accessible to botanical 

 workers generally. Great collections are 

 only good as well as great when the ma- 

 terial they contain is accessible to those 

 who are trained to study it, and local col- 



