January 7, 19ie 



SCIENCE 



9 



as Halsted from Iowa to New Jersey, Thax- 

 ter to Connecticut, Atkinson to Alabama 

 from South Carolina, Humphrey and later 

 Stone, to Massachusetts, Chester to Dela- 

 ware, Pammel to Iowa, Nelson to Wyoming, 

 Bolley to North Dakota, Earl to Mississippi, 

 Jones to Vermont, Selby to Ohio, Stewart 

 to Geneva, N. Y., and Rolfs to Florida. 



To-day the botanist is a fixture at prac- 

 tically all the stations. Naturally some 

 stations have been more active than others 

 along botanical lines, and these have, be- 

 sides a chief botanist, several assistants, or 

 the work is divided into botany, plant pa- 

 thology and plant breeding. For example, 

 there are listed a dozen such investigators 

 at the California station, and Cornell has 

 eleven who give all or part of their time to 

 station work; while at the Ohio station 

 there are seven who give all their time. 



Naturally one expects the station bot- 

 anist to be primarily an investigator. In 

 practise, however, he is handicapped by va- 

 rious other duties that limit his time for 

 investigation. Usually he has more or less 

 teaching to do. Then such routine work as 

 extensive local correspondence, field, or- 

 chard and nursery inspection, demonstra- 

 tion tests, institute talks, and aid to state 

 agricultural societies of various kinds, adds 

 to his duties. 



Despite these limitations, the writer has 

 in his possession some 1,700 bulletins and 

 reports containing articles of more or less 

 botanical interest published by station 

 workers during the twenty-five years he has 

 been interested in this work. From a 

 purely scientific point of view most of these 

 could have been omitted, but from an edu- 

 cational one they doubtless all have a rea- 

 son for their existence. These articles, and 

 an equally large number published by the 

 botanists of the Department of Agricul- 

 ture, lead me in conclusion to a considera- 



tion of the investigations in agricultural 

 botany. 



Investigations: (1) Flowering Plants. — 

 These may be discussed under the three 

 general headings of Flowering Plants, Bac- 

 teria and Fungi. Naturally enough, cul- 

 tivated crops have attracted most attention, 

 but much of this investigation, though semi- 

 botanical in nature, has been made by the 

 agronomists and horticulturists rather than 

 by botanists. Considerable attention has 

 been paid, especially in the past, to variety 

 testing and to methods and time of seeding 

 or propagating, cultivating and fertilizing, 

 different crops, as affecting their growth in 

 various localities. 



Among the botanists who have worked 

 along these agricultural and horticultural 

 lines may be mentioned Bailey, with his 

 numerous studies of a great variety of hor- 

 ticultural and ornamental plants; Barle, 

 with his work with southern varieties of 

 fruits and vegetables; Cook and Hume, 

 with tropical plants; and others with spe- 

 cial plants, as Mell with cotton, Carleton 

 with wheat. Tourney with the date palm, 

 Bolley with flax, Ball with sorghum, Stuart 

 with potatoes, Selby with tobacco, R. S. 

 Smith with English walnut. In this con- 

 nection must be mentioned the plant intro- 

 duction work carried on by the government 

 under the direction of Fairchild and his 

 assistants. Greenhouse problems have re- 

 ceived attention from Bailey, Galloway and 

 Stone. 



Another line of work more purely bot- 

 anical in nature was the floristic surveys 

 made in several of the states, especially 

 where the flora was not well known. Nel- 

 son's work on the flora of Wyoming has 

 been perhaps as extensive and continuous 

 as any of these. Others who have pub- 

 lished station biilletins on the plants of their 

 states are Earle and Mell of Alabama, Bol- 

 ley and Waldron of North Dakota, Blank- 



