64 T O R R E Y A . 



lems l.ave been solved, but many more are still with us, ?.nd new ones develop 

 from year to 3-ear. \Mth all due regard to the qualifications and accomplish- 

 ments of the specialists in the various fields concerned, I maintain that the 

 better equipped the investigator is in basic taxonomic knowledge, the better 

 is he fitted to work on his special problems. This does not mean that all 

 botanists should be taxonomists, but it does mean that all specialists and all 

 laboratory botanists should realize the importance of accurate identification, 

 the implication of botanical analogies, and that they should appreciate the 

 facilities outside of their own fields that are available in specialized institutions 

 in various parts of the country. We will go much further with reasonable 

 cooperation than we will by maintaining a pigeon-hole type of specialization. 



There should be no real antagonisms between the devotees of various 

 aspects of botanical science, for the inter-relationships are close — much closer 

 than some of our specialists realize. A\'e are all laborers in the same vineyard^ 

 and our objective is progress; progress in pure science as well as in the eco- 

 nomic aspects of the subject as a whole. To those representatives of the 

 laboratory school of botan}" who are hypercritical regarding taxonomists and 

 systematists, I would call attention to the fact that progressive taxonomists are 

 now taking advantage of the findings of their associates in other fields includ- 

 ing the histologists, pollen experts, geneticists, cytologists, ecologists, and 

 entirely outside of the biological field invoking the aid of geologists, hydro- 

 graphers, geographers and others in their attempt to solve certain problems of 

 plant relationships. 



This very organization that this week celebrates the seventy-fifth anni- 

 versary of its establishment was founded by individuals whose fields of interest 

 were essentially field botany, taxonomy and systematics. It has evolved, during 

 the course of }ears into a national organization and has wisely and progres- 

 sively widened its activities, yet the unifying idea that maintains it is still that 

 of its founders who were interested in plants and who knew plants as they grew 

 in nature rather than merely as laboratory subjects. I repeat what I have 

 written before: 'Tt has been fashionable in some quarters in modern times 

 to decry both the importance and the value of systematic botany. Because of its 

 vitality, its human interest, its practical bearing on other phases of plant 

 science, and on our everyday life, one suspects that some of its critics have 

 lacked the breadth of view of leaders in science, and have been misguided in 

 criticizing that which they did not fully understand." 



Let us take the broader view, live and let live, keep our respective houses 

 in order, avoid egregious blunders, and attain a realization of the fact that after 

 all there is a unity in plant science in spite of its diversity, and that the entire 

 field is interlaced with the binding bonds of system and order ; and this is 

 taxonomy. 



Harvard Uxiversity 

 Cambridge, ^Massachusetts 



