368 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 90. 



of America, whicli you have done me tlie 

 honor of requiring of me, I have deviated 

 somewhat from the customary lines of such 

 addresses, inasmuch as I have not at- 

 tempted to present an abstract of recent 

 general progress in botany, nor any results 

 of my own investigation. Such topics, in- 

 deed, are more likely than the one I have 

 chosen to interest an assemblage of special- 

 ists like this Society, but as the Society is 

 supposed to have as a principal object the 

 promotion of research, the present has 

 seemed to me a fitting occasion to address, 

 through the Society, the large and growing 

 number of young botanists who may be ex- 

 pected to look to this Society for a certain 

 amount of help and inspiration in the up- 

 building of their own scientific careers; 

 hence it comes that I have selected as my 

 subject 'Opportunity.' 



Let us for a moment compare the condi- 

 tions 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 ca?i be said to have 

 had a history, through the pedantry of the 

 Middle Ages with their ponderous tomes, 

 botany, almost within our own memory, 

 stands as the scientific diversion or pastime 

 of men whose serious business in life was of 

 a very difierent nature. Such training as 

 the earlier botanists had was obtained as 

 being primarily useful in other pursuits than 

 pure research, though there is abundant evi- 

 dence that the master often enjoined upon 

 the pupil the possibilities of botanical study, 

 and no doubt he stretched the limits of 

 botanical instruction deemed necessary, 

 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 lim- 

 ited and research was recreation and re- 

 laxation. 



But our predecessors, even the genera- 

 tion 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 commerce, and at the same time to de- 

 vote much time to the study of nature. 

 To-day the man who is not entirely a busi- 

 ness 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 alwaj^s , 

 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 con- 

 sidered 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 re- 

 search and the propagation of knowledge, 

 but that their work is done under favor- 

 able 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 ad- 

 junct to chemistry, medicine or engineer- 

 ing, the student who wishes may to-day 

 equip himself for a life of research in 

 botany, by a considerable amount of pre- 

 paratory work in the lower schools, begin- 

 ning, perhaps, even in the kindergarten, 

 and by devoting the larger part of his un- 



