Report of the Second Glass in the Second Department — 

 Botany. By Charles H. Peck, Chairman of the Class. 



[Read before the Albany Institute, March, 18, 1873.] 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Albany Institute : 



It is scarcely to be expected that an annual report which 

 should simply record the indication of progress in any one 

 science for a single year would be a long one. The mere 

 results of many years of investigation may sometimes be 

 expressed in a few sentences. Progress in the development 

 of any natural science is necessarily slow. Nature's works 

 are so vast, so numerous, so various and so complicated in 

 their relations, while her investigators, her patient ob- 

 servers and persevering inquirers are so few that great and 

 rapid advances are not possible. Besides, the method of 

 investigation is almost always such as to require slow and 

 cautious steps. We are compelled first to seek out and 

 carefully ascertain a vast number of facts and then from 

 these we are to deduce the great underlying truths and 

 principles upon which the phenomena rest. If we attempt 

 to theorize we are as liable to build upon the sand as upon 

 a rock. Our theories are reliable only so far as they are 

 sustained by facts. In the vegetable kingdom, especially, 

 there are so many exceptions to general rules, so much 

 that is peculiar to each group and even to each species that 

 we need to study the most minute details. 



The earlier botanists devoted themselves chiefly to the 

 study of the higher orders of plants, i. e., the phaenogamia 

 or flowering plants, to the work of describing and classify- 

 i n g> grouping and arranging them into a system which 

 should indicate their relations to each other and facilitate the 

 acquisition of knowledge concerning any particular species 



