64 NATURE STUDY AND AGRICULTURE 



conceived opinions as to what it should be is to court re- 

 buff and perhaps blindness. There was once a time when 

 botanists conceived the idea that each kind of plant repre- 

 sented a definite type, and this type was carefully described 

 and named. When they visited plants in nature, they 

 carefully selected those individuals which represented the 

 preconceived type, and disregarded all the others, which 

 others happened to be in the large majority. In fact, one 

 ardent botanist called these individuals that would not 

 come true to type "devices of the devil." This distinct 

 prejudice blinded botanists to the great fact that was 

 thrusting itself upon their attention persistently that no 

 such types exist, but that variation exists everywhere. In 

 this case prejudice was sufficient to introduce into nature, 

 for these observers, a figment of their own imagination; 

 and it will do just the same thing for anyone who observes 

 only what he thinks he ought to observe. 



Here comes the danger in books and teachers, for must 

 one not read or hear before he can observe? This is true, 

 in a sense, but not in the literal way in which it is often 

 taken. The books and teachers must not be taken to 

 direct and enforce the details of observation, but simply 

 to emphasize the record of things that have been observed. 

 They suggest the things to examine, but should never 

 determine the things seen. A botanist may describe a 

 plant or a zoologist an animal in considerable detail, and 

 yet no one may be able to find forms just like the descrip- 

 tions. The result of observation should be, not that no 

 such forms could be found, but that the forms seen differed 

 in several particulars. 



The beauty of the open mind is that it sees what is to 



