48 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XX. No 494 



SCIENCE: 



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A PLEA FOE A BROADER BOTANY. 



BY L. H. BAILEY. 



The science of botany, as ordinarily considered and 

 taught, has not laid hold of the full amount of territory to 

 which it is entitled, and it has not, therefore, reached its 

 full measure of usefulness. Strictly speaking, botany is the 

 science of plants, but by general consent it appears to have 

 dwarfed itself into a science of wild plants; or if it deals 

 with cultivated plants they are such as fall to the care of 

 botanical gardens, or, in other words, those which are culti- 

 vated for the sole purpose of maintaining a collection. It is 

 not strange that in the earlier days botanists should have 

 eliminated from their domain the whole realm of cultivated 

 plants, for cultivation then meant little else than the main- 

 tenance and improvement of plants for merely economic 

 purposes, and there was little science of cultivation. But 

 now that the teachings of evolution have thrown a new pur- 

 pose into the study of all natural objects, cultivated plants 

 have acquired a fascinating interest from the abundant light 

 which they throw upon variation and descent. In fact, 

 aside from paleontology, there is no direction in which such 

 abundant material can be found for the study of evolution 

 as in cultivated plants, for in nearly all of them the variation 

 is fully as great as in domesticated animals, while the species 

 are very many times more numerous; and, by the fostering' 

 aid rendered by man, the accumulative effects of modified 

 environment and selection are much more quickly seen — 

 and therefore more intelligible — than in wild plants. My 

 nearest neighbor, who is a paleontologist, and myself, a hor- 

 ticulturist, compare our respective fields of study to the de- 

 cay and burning of a log. In both decay and burning the 

 same'amount of work is finally accomplished and the same 

 amount of heat is evolved, but one process requires years, 

 perhaps a century, for its accomplishment, and the other 

 requires but a few hours. Oultivated plants afford within 

 definite periods of time as much variation and progression' 

 as their wild prototypes exhibit in ages. So the garden is one 

 of the best places in which to study evolution. It is a com- 



mon opinion, to be sure, that the variation of cultivated 

 plants is anomalous and uninstructive because influenced by 

 man, but this is wholly erroneous. I have yet to find a 

 variation in cultivated plants which can not be explained 

 by laws already announced and well known. It is strange 

 that one can ever believe that any variation of natural ob- 

 jects is unnatural ! 



But wholly aside from the fascinations of pure science, 

 cultivated plants and cultivation itself demand the attention 

 of the botanists, for horticulture is nothing more than an 

 application of the principles of botany. Just now, mycology 

 is making important additions to horticultural practice, but 

 there are greater fields for the applications of an exact sci- 

 ence of plant physiology, whenever that science shall have 

 reached a proportionate development. In short, the possi- 

 bilities in horticulture, both in science and practice, are just 

 as great as they are in the science of botany upon which it 

 rests; and inasmuch as it is absolutely impossible to separate 

 horticulture and botany by any definition or any practical 

 test, the two should go together in an ideal presentation of 

 the science of plants. Horticulture belongs to botany rather 

 than to agriculture. 



The ideal chair or department of botany, therefore, should 

 comprise, in material equipment, laboratories, botanic garden, 

 green-houses, orchards, vegetable and ornamental gardens, 

 all of which should be maintained for purposes of active in- 

 vestigation rather than as mere collections; and I am sure 

 that no department of botany can accomplish the results of 

 which the science is capable until such breadth of equipment 

 is secured. I am aware that there are difficulties in such a 

 comprehensive field, but the only serious one is the lack of 

 men. Botanists, as a rule, care little for gardens and culti- 

 vated plants, and horticulturists are too apt to undervalue 

 the importance of scientific training and investigation ; but 

 the time cannot be far distant when men shall appear with 

 sufficient scientific and practical training to appreciate the 

 needs of the whole science and with enough executive ability 

 to manage its many interests. Such men are no doubt 

 teaching in some of our colleges to-day, were the opportunity 

 open to them. One cannot be a specialist in all or even 

 several of the many subjects comprised in this ideal, but he 

 may possess the genius to encourage and direct the work of 

 other specialists. The iirst need is the opportunity, for there 

 is not yet, so far as I know, ^n ideal chair of botany in ex- 

 istence, where the science can be actively studied in its fullest 

 possibilities and then be presented to the student and the 

 world. 



Cornell University. 



THE LAWS AND NATURE OF^eOHESTON. 



ET BEGIN ALD A. FESSENDEN. 



Desirous of finding some relation between the conductivity of 

 metals and their otlier physical properties, the writer, several 

 years ago, began to tabulate all the data he could find. Realizing 

 the uselessness of comparing the properties of substances whose 

 natures are essentially different, as wood and iron, it was decided 

 to confine the work to the elementary substances. It was found 

 that the only elements whose properties were at all well known 

 were those of the five chemical groups comprising the following 

 metals: I., iron, nickel, cobalt, ijlatinum. osmium, iridium; II., 

 sodium, copper, silver, gold; III., magnesium, zinc, cadmium, 

 mercury; IV., aluminium, thallium, indium, gallium; V., sili- 

 con, tin, lead. 



The data collected were not very concordant, but when they 

 had been compared and the most probable values taken, laying due 

 stress on the purity of the substances examined and the standing 



