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AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
[Vol. 8 
organic world. The study of structure, physiology, or behavior has often 
proceeded with inadequate knowledge of the position that the particular 
plant under observation holds in relation to other plants, its resemblances 
and differences as compared with its kin, near and remote. When Gray's 
Lessons in Botany was superseded by the general textbook that began with 
slime molds and ended with sunflowers, there did not seem to be time to 
make the acquaintance of particular plants, and when a little from each 
topic pertaining to the varied structure and action of plants from the 
cytology of the cell to the sensitiveness of a tendril had to be interpolated, 
the plant as an individual member of an evolutionary group was overshad- 
owed. The great English botanist, Sir Joseph Hooker, once wrote to Dr. 
Asa Gray: 
I content myself with a casual grin at yOung men calling themselves botanists, who 
know nothing of plants but the "innards" of a score or so. The pendulum will swing 
round, or rather back, one day. 
It is already on the way; let us hasten the movement. 
The botanist's realm is the vegetable kingdom. As the man of the 
world is able to assign each person he meets to a particular race, country, 
or section, with more or less accuracy, to have some individual acquaintance 
with a few here and there, but knows only those within a limited circle 
sufficiently well to call them by name and to be familiar with some of the 
facts of their history, so the botanist should have a general knowledge of 
plants of all countries sufficient to enable him to place most of those coming 
to his attention within certain orders or families, to know a few by name, 
and with those he meets frequently, especially the flowering plants, to 
have the same familiar acquaintance of name, characteristics, and behavior, 
which he prizes for his speaking friends. In the realm of plants the botanist 
has a distinct advantage over the man of the world, for he has manuals 
which enable him to ascertain the name of the plant he wishes to know, and 
to be unfamiliar with such manuals is to write oneself down inadequately 
equipped for his duties. My attention has been most frequently called, 
perhaps, to the shortcomings of the cytologist, who essays to throw light on 
the relationship of parasitic fungi by a discussion of his observations without 
taking full precaution to make sure of the exact identity of the material he 
has used, or of the kinship of the forms he has selected for comparison. 
In this way laborious and extensive studies may fail to exert due influence, 
and may have their chief value confined to a record of the particular obser- 
vations. But no class of investigators need be credited with an unwar- 
ranted share of haphazard interest in the exact identity of the plants handled. 
I fancy the bacteriologist and the paleobotanist have the best reasons for 
being uncertain. There is a joke, with which you may be familiar, that, 
when puzzled about the affinities of a plant, "fossilize it and send it to a 
paleobotanist, and he will give you the genus and species at once." The 
students of microfungi are not to be outdone in this particular. Among 
