54 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 393. 



not be lost sight of that there may be some 

 dangei", as has been pointed out, in build- 

 ing up an 'educated proletariat,' a class 

 who, as specialists, will care more for get- 

 ting their names attached to abstruse tech- 

 nical brochures than thej' will for a treatise 

 that will enable some struggling mortal to 

 make life less a burden. Some one has 

 truly said that the danger from education 

 is not so much from its quantity as from its 

 character, so that it is the character of our 

 training that should receive most careful, 

 conscientious and considerate thought. 



This leads us now to a consideration of 

 the nature of the training our young men 

 should receive in order to fit them more es- 

 pecially for the opening fields of labor in 

 applied botany, and at the same time make 

 good citizens of them, whether they go into 

 the M'ork in question or some other equally 

 important. Pure science, of course, must 

 form the grounclAvork for this training, but 

 in addition to that there should be parallel 

 with it, throughout the entire course, a 

 rigid system of training in the application 

 of science to the practical affairs of life. 

 It is needless to say that we do not have 

 anywhere in this country, at the present 

 time, such a course of training in botany; 

 and for this reason the men who go into 

 this kind of Avork must receive their train- 

 ing, in large part, after the college doors 

 close on them, I do not wish to be under- 

 stood as implying that this state of affairs 

 is due to our teachers, for most of them 

 recognize the fact just mentioned and are 

 doing everything in their power to over- 

 come it. The trouble is with our system of 

 education as a whole, but more directly the 

 body politic, which has, ever since mind 

 training began, given preference to the 

 ornamental rather than the useful. Noth- 

 ing has done so much to weaken this idea 

 in the human mind as science itself, and 

 nothing can so strengthen science in what 

 it can further do in this direction as to 



teach its broad practical application to the 

 affairs of life. It would seem, therefore, 

 that the time is ripe for some decided action 

 leading to a clearer understanding as to the 

 methods whereby the increasing demand 

 for men trained in applied botanical work 

 may be met. The National Government 

 alone is spending close on to a million dol- 

 lars a year in this work, and the demand 

 for the right kind of men far exceeds the 

 supply. In fact, the Government, through 

 lack of properly trained men, has been 

 forced to undertake the training itself, a 

 course which would not be necessary if the 

 proper cooperation could be secured from 

 the colleges. Here is a subject which 

 might very properly be taken up by this 

 Association, and more especially this Sec- 

 tion, as it is one in which most of us are 

 either directly or indirectly interested. I 

 have dwelt upon it somewhat in detail, as 

 it has seemed to me the foundation upon 

 which all other matters are built. With 

 the men that we have and the men we can 

 get, what then are some of the problems 

 with which applied botany in the future 

 can hope to deal 1 



With the opening of new territory dur- 

 ing the past few years there has of course 

 developed a need for still broader work, 

 for we are now especially pressed for trop- 

 ical investigations, which we are unable to 

 meet through lack of equipment and lack 

 of properly trained men. Moreover, an- 

 other and equally important field has been 

 opened through the rapid extension of our 

 population into the arid and semiarid re- 

 gions ; and the demand from these people 

 for light on many subjects, which we are 

 ill prepared to give. It seems to me that 

 everything points to the fact that the heavy 

 demands for applied botanical work for the 

 next fifty years will be mainly in the field 

 of plant physiology and pathology. The 

 two subjects are intimately connected, and 

 while there will, of course, be many physi- 



