748 The American Naturalist. [September, 
teachers; and in these, for the most part, something of modern Botany 
is given. Many years of personal experience has shown the writer 
that in one Western State it has been possible to do much in the way 
of improving the teaching of Botany through the agency of the sum- 
mer school. Let not the teachers of Botany in the colleges and univer- 
sities grudge the time given to work in the summer school. The 
additional work is doubtless the most productive work of the year, for, 
if it be well done, its effects will be felt by hundreds of pupils in many 
schools. Let professors put their best efforts and their most mature 
thought into this work. 
The remedy for the second obstacle may be looked for in the move- 
ment in the National Educational Association, which resulted in the 
organization of a Department of Natural Science Instruction, whose 
first meeting was held recently in Buffalo. It was notable that every 
paper presented at this meeting emphasized the culture-value of Science, 
and this was especially marked in those dealing with Botany in the 
school curriculum. We, who teach in the larger colleges and univer- 
sities, have been remiss in not setting forth more prominently and 
forcibly the culture-value of Science, and botanists have sinned equally 
with the others. It is high time that we not only teach Botany for the 
culture which it gives the student, but we should by lectures, public 
addresses, and by popular articles, show how it may be presented so as 
to insure culture. Here we have a duty to perform, and if we have the 
interest of Science truly at heart, we will not shrink from the labor 
which this duty imposes, Let every professor of Botany realize that 
` through the new department of the National Educational Association 
he may influence the teaching of his science so that it may have a 
culture-value—CHARLEs E. BESSEY. 
The Conifers of the Pike’s Peak Region.—It may help the 
visitor to Colorado Springs and Manitou to know that the following 
conifers are more or less common in the adjacent mountains. Perhaps, 
when he learns that through the carelessness of man enormous forests 
of these trees have been burned from the sides of Cheyenne Mountain, 
Cameron’s Cone and Pike’s Peak, and that where once grew dense forests 
of conifers, with their power of conserving the moisture of the snows and 
rains, there grows the worthless “ popple” (Populus balsamifera candi- 
cans), he, too, will be ashamed of man, the vandal, who has destroyed 
forever, I fear, the conifer forests of this region, with the destruction of 
which forests there has been a decrease in the volume of water in the 
mountain streams, while at the same time the sudden and dangerous 
floods which rush down the mountain sides have greatly increased. 
