SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1097 



May, 1914. One of its chief features, be- 

 sides the state organization, afSliated with 

 its agricultural college, to direct the work, 

 is the organization of societies in the va- 

 rious counties, with a paid Farm Bureau 

 agent, who shall carry direct to the farmers 

 for practical application the teachings of 

 the agricultural colleges and the results of 

 the investigations of the Department of 

 Agriculture and the experiment stations. 



Whether or not this extension service will 

 prove as valuable as have the colleges and 

 stations remains yet to be demonstrated, 

 but it is based in part on results already ac- 

 complished in the south. The government 

 has backed the movement with an appro- 

 priation of $10,000 a year to each state, this 

 to be gradually increased in proportion to 

 the agricultural population, provided equal 

 sums are appropriated by the state. This 

 means that by the year 1923 there may be 

 spent in this work in the United States 

 over $9,000,000. In most states this will 

 be more money than is spent by the exper- 

 iment station, and in a few possibly more 

 than is spent by the agricultural college. 



BOTANICAL DEVELOPMENT 



Early History. — I have gone thus fully 

 into the history of American agriculture be- 

 cause I believe that botany, at least during 

 recent years, has been fundamentally influ- 

 enced by it. What has been the history of 

 our botanical development ? It began with 

 the explorers, usuallj'' foreigners, who col- 

 lected plants and sent them to Europe for 

 identification and description. Then came 

 our native collectors, who finally began to 

 describe the plants they collected. These 

 early workers were interested chiefly in 

 flowering plants, but occasionally there was 

 an individual who worked with fungi or 

 other groups. Local natural history socie- 

 ties in time offered congenial atmosphere 

 for the study of local floras. Eventually 



governmental aid was given to exploring ex- 

 peditions. Usually those engaged in bot- 

 anical work were men who gained their 

 livelihood from some other profession, — 

 doctors, ministers and even lawyers. 



First College Instruction. — There were a 

 few institutions, however, that quite early 

 had professors who gave limited botanical 

 instruction and carried on investigations. 

 Some idea of this early botanical work is 

 given by the following notes from five of our 

 oldest educational institutions, furnished 

 the writer by their present botanical heads. 



At Harvard, our oldest educational insti- 

 tution, William Dandridge Peck was ap- 

 pointed Massachusetts Professor of Natural 

 History in 1805, and was the founder of the 

 present Gray Botanical Garden. He was 

 both a zoologist and a botanist, and gave 

 lectures in the university. Peck was suc- 

 ceeded in 1825 by Thomas Nuttall, who was 

 director of the botanical garden and lec- 

 turer in natural history. Nuttall lived at 

 the Garden, but evidently did not greatly 

 relish his work, as he resigned in 1834, In 

 1842 the Fischer Professorship of Natural 

 History was founded, and Asa Gray was 

 appointed. This professorship has been 

 since its foundation a botanical position, a 

 fact worthy of mention to our zoological 

 friends, who in these days seem to dominate 

 all the professorships in biology. 



At Yale, botany was apparently first 

 taught to a greater or less extent by Dr. 

 Eli Ives, who held a position in materia 

 mediea and botany from 1813 to 1829, and 

 a professorship in theory and practise of 

 physic until 1852. He established a small 

 botanical garden, which has since gone out 

 of existence. After Ives's time botanical 

 instruction was lacking until Daniel C. 

 Eaton was appointed professor of botany in 

 1864, a position he occupied until his death 

 in 1895. 



At Princeton, the first instruction in bot- 



