l8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



forms a man knows, the safer his conclusions as to the interrelations 

 of all, or of the members of any group of them. 



Of course the specialist in plant anatomy, little interested in the 

 whole chain of plant relationships — he to whom 500 species were 

 enough for his own purposes — may chance not to be in sympathy 

 with these searchings of all corners of the earth for new plants. ^ 



But to what comprehension of the whole of botany has such a 

 mind attained? It would have something like its parallel in the 

 astronomer, if such astronomer there had been, who had deprecated 

 the labor involved in the discovery of the planets Uranus and Nep- 

 tune upon the plea that there was already enough to do with the 

 rings of Saturn and the canals of Mars. At least somewhat like 

 that is the attitude of the historian who makes light of the work 

 of plant discovery and plant description. To ascertain, as Adanson 

 was at the pains of doing, what number of species a given systemat- 

 ist had known, was the only possible way of informing himself of the 

 comprehensiveness of the man's view of things. And as to the ideal 

 and ultimate perfection of knowledge of the vegetable kingdom, 

 that is manifestly impossible of attainment, so long as a single 

 type, either living or fossil, remains undiscovered and undescribed. 

 It is a principle which not only justifies, but, in the interests of the 

 science as viewed without partiality or prejudice and compre- 

 hensively, imperatively demands the most thorough exploration of 

 every field, the equipment of the best possible botanic gardens and 

 herbaria, and also the highest possible perfection of the art of 

 ph3rtography, that is, plant diagnosis or description. 



Of incalculable usefulness to the student of systematization is 

 phytography. Its purpose is that of enabling the botanist to 

 measurably complete his knowledge of this and that group of plants 

 only some proportion of the species of which he has been able to 

 see, inspect, and study in the living state. All that a man may 

 learn about plants in twenty years of field work, supplemented by 

 all that gardens and herbaria have to show, will not amount to the 

 knowledge of any more than a fractional part of the specific mem- 

 bership of as much as one of the many families or considerable genera 

 of higher plants. For the rounding out of his knowledge — general, 

 even superficial knowledge ^of whatsoever plant alliance, one is 

 always dependent on descriptions. It is one of the most important 

 conditions of all general botany; one that was fully recognized at 

 the beginning ; also one that will forever remain. It has always been, 

 and it will always be, that a good plant description, placed before 



' Sachs, Geschichte, pp. 42, 43. English edition, pp. 39, 40. 



