22 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 5 + 



of a new word, or else the more extended application of an old one^ 

 which, in as far as sciencs is concerned amounts to the same thing. 

 It is possible to trace to a time that lies well within the period 

 of modern botany the first detection and first naming of that kind) 

 of organ which we call a stipule; but no one will have the hardihood 

 to propose that we may trace to its first employment the term leaL 

 Yet this term, which one may never hope to trace to its origin, is 

 as strictly botanical as the later term stipule, and more important. 

 Furthermore, there was a time when the very term leaf — or at 

 least its equivalent in some lost language of a primal race — first 

 came into use. And still further, the mental processes by which a 

 Malpighi arrives at the distinguishing between the stipule and the 

 other parts of the leaf, and those by which the unknown primal 

 investigator came to distinguish between leaf and the stem or 

 branch that bears it, are the same. Neither was more nor less- 

 scientific than the other. Each equally with the other had done a 

 piece of strictly botanical research. This is not af&rming equality 

 of intelligence for the two, or questioning that he of the later time 

 was capable of solving many problems of plant life impossible of 

 solution by him of the earlier era. Also the motives leading to 

 examination and distinguishing may have been quite different : he 

 of the more recent period was actuated it may have been by that 

 scientific curiosity, that mere zeal for knowledge, which often fires 

 the cultivated mind; he of the primeval time was impelled per- 

 haps by sheer necessity. He is much dependent on the plant world 

 for life's comforts, even for its necessities. One part of a tree is- 

 of great use to him for one purpose, another part for a very different 

 purpose, a third being of no use. Therefore from his utilitarian 

 point of view it becomes manifestly needful that the different parts 

 of plants be distinguished and each different part named. Language 

 demands the introduction of such terms. But the mental pro- 

 cesses, I repeat it, are the same in either case, and without respect 

 to the actuating motive. It is all work of examining, comparing, 

 distinguishing, segregating, and naming the segregates. Every 

 step in the procedure of either is scientific. If one is tributary to a- 

 science of botany, so is the other. And if these reflections seem ta 

 indicate that scientific botany may be, as to its first elements, older 

 than all literature, what of it? There is but one point of view 

 from which it will be disputed, namely that which regards man as- 

 having made his first appearance on earth in a condition of advanced 

 intelligence, with a well-developed language, and also bearing 

 a divine commission to assign names to all manner of natural 



