520 BOTANICAL OPPORTUNITY. 



commerce, and at the same time to devote much time to the study of 

 nature. To-day the man who is not entirely a business man is better 

 out of business, and, with few exceptions, the man who is not entirely 

 a student is little better than a dilettante in science. Concentration is 

 the order of the day, and specialization is the lot of most men. But 

 specialization, the keynote of progressive evolution, is always intimately 

 associated with a division of labor. Fortunately, the men who enter 

 and win in the great game of commerce and manufacture see in a more 

 or less clear way that nearly every great manufacturing or commercial 

 advance has grown out of a succession of obscure discoveries made by 

 the devotee to pure science, often considered by him, indeed, only as so 

 many more words deciphered in the great and mysterious unread book 

 of nature, but sooner or later adapted and applied for the benefit of all 

 men by the shrewd mind of a master in the art of money-making. To 

 these men, successful in business, we owe it that to-day not only are 

 some men able to devote their entire time to scientific research and the 

 propagation of knowledge, but that their work is done under favorable 

 conditions, and with a wealth of aids and adjuncts that would hardly 

 have been thought of a generation ago. 



Instead of a smattering of systematic botany and organography, 

 given as an adjunct to chemistry, medicine, or engineering, the student 

 who wishes may to day equip himself for a life of research in botany, 

 by a considerable amount of preparatory work in the lower schools, 

 beginning, perhaps, even in the kindergarten, and by devoting the 

 larger part of his undergraduate time in college to the elements of 

 the su.bject in the broadest and, if he wish, technical scope, having the 

 benefit of marvelously detailed appliances and a broad knowledge of 

 general facts. If he can and will work for a higher university degree, 

 thus equipped, he may delve into the depths of the most limited 

 specialty, guided for a time by those who have already broken soil 

 there, and left at last with a rich and unexplored vein for his own 

 elaboration. With this training, if he be fortunate in securing a posi- 

 tion offering opportunity for research, or if he enjoy independent 

 means, he may hope for a lifetime of more or less uninterrupted oppor- 

 tunity for unearthing the wealth of discovery that lies just within his 

 reach. 



Considering the prevalent conditions, my subject naturally divides 

 itself into two quite distinct parts: the opportunity of institutions and 

 of individuals. We stand to-day, apparently, at a transition point. 

 Most of the active workers of the present time are college professors, 

 who have done the research work that has made their names known, 

 during the leisure that could be found in the year's routine of instruc- 

 tion or during their long vacations, and with facilities nominally secured 

 for class use, or, in many instances, like those of a generation ago, the 

 private property of the investigator. Even when appreciated at some- 

 thing like its true value, their original work, for the most part, has been 

 closely watched to prevent it from encroaching upon the first duty, 



