BOTANICAL OPPOET UNITY. 1 



By William Teeleasb. 



In selecting a subject for tlie first presidential address before the 

 Botanical Society of America, wLich you liave done me the honor of 

 requiring of me, I have deviated somewhat from the customary lines of 

 such addresses, inasmuch as I have not attemj^ted to prer«ent an abstract 

 of recent general progress in botany, nor any results of my own inves- 

 tigation. Such topics, indeed, are more likely than the one I have 

 chosen to interest an assemblage of specialists like this society 5 but as 

 the society is supposed 'to have as a principal object the promotion of 

 research, the present has seemed a fitting occasion to address, through 

 the society, the large and growing number of young botanists who may 

 be expected to look to this society for a certain amount of help and 

 inspiration in the upbuilding of their own scientific careers; hence it 

 comes that I have selected as my subject "Opportunity." 



Let us for a moment compare the conditions under which scientific 

 work is done to-day with those prevalent in the past. From a purely 

 utilitarian, and, for a time, perhaps almost instinctive knowledge of 

 plants and their properties, beginning, it may be, before our race can 

 be said to have had a history, through the pedantry of the Middle 

 Ages with their ponderous tomes, botany, almost within our memory, 

 stands as the scientific diversion or pastime of men whose serious busi- 

 ness in life was of a very different nature. Such training as the earlier 

 botanists had was obtained as being primarily useful in other pursuits 

 than pure research, though there is abundant evidence that the master 

 often enjoined upon the jiupil the i)ossibilities of botanical study, and 

 no doubt he stretched the limits of botanical instruction deemed neces- 

 sary, just as is done to-day in technical schools, in the hope that the 

 surplus might be so used as to increase the general store of knowledge; 

 but, at best, training was limited, and research was recreation and 

 relaxation. 



But our predecessors, even the generation immediately before us, 

 lived under conditions which made it possible for a man to hold high 

 place in the business or professional world, to accumulate wealth in 



'Address of the retiring president, delivered before the Botanical Society of 

 America, at Buffalo, N. Y., August 21, 1896. From the Botanical Gazette, Vol. XIII. 



519 



