BOTANICAL OPPORTUNITY. 521 



class work; and in most cases tbe facilities that they have been able 

 to bring together are in direct proportion to the number of students 

 attracted to their departments, and therefore in inverse ratio to their 

 own leisure for research. But, as I have already stated, the feeling is 

 growing among men able to foster such enterprises, that research is a 

 thing worthy of being promoted, and we have before our eyes the 

 spectacle of a gradually unfolding class of institutions in which investi- 

 gation is not only tolerated but expected, either as an adjunct to 

 instruction, as in the greater number of colleges, as a concomitant of 

 educational displays, as in botanical museums and gardens, or, at least 

 nominally, as a basis for technical or economic research, as in several 

 of the larger drug houses, and, notably, in various agricultural experi- 

 ment stations and the national Department of Agriculture. Perhaps 

 the time has not yet come when laboratories of botanical research can 

 stand out quite alone and justify their existence without reference to 

 other ends, the utility of which is more generally understood and con- 

 ceded, but it seems safe to predict that the next decade will see their 

 complete evolution. 



Opportunity, for institutions, lies primarily in equipment, and secon- 

 darily in its use. The problem of equipment for research is a com- 

 plicated and difficult one. So long as there were no laboratories 

 specially designed for this purpose, it was natural that the instruc- 

 tional laboratory should be furnished with api^liances for demonstra- 

 tion, and that these should be amplified, as far as possible, for the 

 repetition of experiments, in the first place, and afterwards for their 

 extension; and it is no doubt true that a number of the smaller educa- 

 tional laboratories are to-day over-equipped when account is taken of 

 the possible use to which they can be put. With a specialization such 

 as we now see in progress, it may be questioned whether the ordinary 

 collegiate equipment can not be reduced in scope in many instances, 

 with benefit to the institution, by releasing money often badly needed 

 in other directions, either in the same or different departments. On 

 the other hand, it is certain that the equipment of the broader research 

 laboratories, whether connected with universities or independent, must 

 be made much more comprehensive than any which to-day exists in 

 this country. 



Under the stimulus of the last two decades, botany has come to the 

 front in most colleges as a study well calculated to develoj) the powers 

 of observation and the reasoning faculties. Where it still occupies the 

 place of a fixed study of a few terms' duration in a prescribed under- 

 graduate course, it is evident that the necessary equipment of the 

 department is expressible in the simplest terms : for each course, that 

 which is needed to exemplify by the most direct object lessons the sub- 

 ject selected and enough general and collateral material and litera- 

 ture to complement the work. But the case is somewhat different 

 when, as is now frequent, a considerable option is allowed the student in 

 the courses taken for the baccalaureate degree. Here the temptation 



