THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



93 



matists were never so numerous nor more active than at present, 

 but all activity is not necessarily progress. Motion up and clown 

 mav be spectacular and nothing more. 



There is but one reason for the existence of the professional 

 systematist, viz : to make it easier for others to know plants. If 

 we fail in this one thing we fail in all. Judging by the indiffer- 

 ence of the multitude to our work; by the helplessness of the 

 amateur who tries to acquaint himself with the plants he meets ; 

 by the none-too-well concealed cynicism of our colleagues in 

 other lines, we are failing in this. Our work has been analytic 

 and not constructive. A\ e have dismembered org'anisms and 

 held up to view their component parts. We have been looking 

 for dift'erences and with such amazing success that the funda- 

 mental resemblances have, for the most part, escaped our 

 notice. 



^Morphology, physiology, ecology, and economic botany in 

 its scores of applications haA^e all gone forward by leaps and 

 bounds, but in spite of, not by the aid of, taxonomy. Not all 

 taxonomic work has been useless or erroneous. Keenness of 

 observation and great powers of discrimination are not lacking. 

 It is not so much that what has been done should not haA^e been 

 done, but rather that more should have been done to relate re- 

 cent work to that which has gone before. Synthesis should 

 have followed so closely upon analysis of the elements of our 

 flora that duplications would promptly have been discovered 

 and the relations of each element to the other detected and 

 stated. 



We are on the eve of a new era of reconstruction. Al- 

 ready the pendulum is swinging back toward greater con- 

 servatism. The dismemberment of genera and the multiplica- 

 tion of species proceeds more cautiously. This grows out of 

 the revitalized aim, ''make it easier for others to know plants." 

 — Az'en Nelson in Science. 



