TORREYA 



March, 1908 

 Vol. 8. No. 3. 



. BOTANY * 



By Herbert Maule Richards 



What is the content and scope of the science of botany? 

 Popular opinion will answer somewhat easily : Botany consists in 

 the gathering of plants, and the dismembering of them, in con- 

 nection with the use of a complicated terminology. That is the 

 beginning and end of botany as it is understood by the majority ; 

 there is nothing more to be said. In consequence, the employ- 

 ment of the botanist seems so trivial, so very remote from impor- 

 tant human interests that no second thought is given to it. The 

 conception formed in ignorance is continued in ignorance. Even 

 the zoologist is at an advantage, for the public is finally forced 

 to admit that it does not know what he is about, while it under- 

 stands the botanist very well. He is quite hopeless, for, while 

 flowers may be pretty things to pick, they should not be pulled 

 to pieces, and if he does not happen to be interested in dissecting 

 flowers he is not a botanist but simply a fraud. 



Far from being remote, the study of plants comes very close 

 to human interests. One has but to stop to think that plants 

 are the great energy source for man himself and the animals 

 upon which his well-being depends, to recognize that a careful 

 study of their manner of life, the conditions which favor or hinder 

 their growth is of the very first importance. Besides this, human 

 curiosity demands that plants be investigated, if for no other 

 reason than that they must be made to yield answers to the per- 

 petual questions that man is asking regarding the world about 

 him. 



Under botany we have to consider all the questions as to the 



* A lecture delivered at Columbia University in the Series of Science, Philosophy, 

 and Art, December 4, 1907, copyrighted and published by the Columbia University 

 Press, February, 1908, and here reprinted by permission. 

 [No. 2, Vol. 8, of Torreya, comprising pages 25-40, was issued February 26, 190S.] 



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