Apkil 28, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



637 



his life. Let us think of these young men 

 that we are suggesting for positions as be- 

 ginners merely ; and when you send one to 

 me I shall take him as a beginner, not as 

 a finished botanist. Yet very commonly 

 we say to our students that they can not 

 begin either investigating or teaching until 

 they have made a special study in partic- 

 ular fields. "We try to impress them with 

 the great importance of graduate work, and 

 the littleness of their present knowledge, 

 and we impress upon them also our con- 

 viction of their general inability. 



We need broad general courses with defi- 

 nite beginnings and endings, and including 

 something of all the phases of the science, 

 well wrought together into one science, and 

 not courses consisting of a collection of 

 disjointed and disconnected phases of the 

 subject. I think here is one of our mis- 

 takes. As one of my correspondents wrote 

 very emphatically, "this splitting up of 

 the science so that the student thinks of it 

 as morphology, so many hours ; physiology, 

 so many hours ; pathology, so many hours ; 

 and mycology, and algology, and bryology, 

 and taxonomy, etc., has done much to dis- 

 courage young men." 



No doubt also we can help to make more 

 botanists by encouraging an esprit de corps 

 among our students, whether they are un- 

 dergraduate or graduate students. All are 

 botanists; even the newest recruit belongs 

 to the botanical army. Let us not with- 

 hold honor from these new additions to our 

 force. And yet I have seen in many places 

 a tendency to persistently belittle the 

 knowledge of the student in his first and 

 second years on the theory, I suppose, that 

 it is good for a young fellow to be "taken 

 down," and made to feel that in this stage 

 he is little better than a fool. I do not 

 think this is right. 



Another thing that we can do is to study 

 our men, and select the more promising. 



And we must not be too particular, either, 

 in our choice. I have seen some rather 

 unpromising men turn out to be very suc- 

 cessful botanists. We must not turn men 

 away simply because at first they do not 

 seem to be promising. Some slow men 

 finally become good botanists and success- 

 ful teachers. On the other hand, I have 

 known some brilliant men who in the end 

 have done very little with all their bril- 

 liancy. I feel sure that as teachers we 

 should frankly tell our students what we 

 think they are able to do. Let us stop 

 looking for Torreys, Grays, Farlows, 

 Barneses, Coulters, etc. That, however, is 

 what we are doing. We are putting up a 

 standard that is only reached once in a 

 long while. Let us realize that the young 

 fellows in our classes are very much as we 

 were — just mediocre men. Most of us are 

 that, but we got on somehow, and have 

 been measurably successful. And so will 

 they. Give them a chance. 



Then I fear that we have not treated 

 botany as a profession, but merely as a 

 subject of study. Of course it is to be 

 studied, and of course, also, it is to be 

 taught. But it is also a profession, and 

 we should weave into our instruction much 

 of the ethics of the science, whether it is to 

 take the form of teaching or investigation. 

 The young botanist should be made to feel 

 that he is going to use his botanical knowl- 

 edge, and that he can do so with entire 

 propriety. Let us stop saying to the young 

 man: "You do not know enough yet to be- 

 gin ' ' — but let him begin ! 



Now, before I come to my closing dis- 

 cussion I want to make a slight digression 

 in order to speak of college courses in gen- 

 eral, and especially the go-as-you-please 

 method to be found in most of our institu- 

 tions. I fully believe in having work pre- 

 scribed as to kind and place in the college 

 curriculum. I believe in prescribing the 



