June, I92I] ARTHUR SPECIALIZATION AND FUNDAMENTALS 279 
parasitic forms the relation of the fungus to the host is very intimate, and 
the identity of the one often involves that of the other. Examples are 
numerous where the name of the host has been adopted for the fungus grow- 
ing upon it, only to learn later that due care had not been exercised by the 
original collector and that the host was not what it purported to be, the 
name thus becoming a misnomer. In general, probably, a considerable 
percentage of the inaccuracy and misinterpretation in various fields of 
botanical science is traceable to a lack of intimate acquaintance with plants 
as living objects having distinctive names and varied relationships. 
While systematic botany may never again have the place of honor in 
the curriculum that it held in the post-Linnaean days when Jean Jacques 
Rousseau wrote his delightful letters on the elements of botany, and coming 
down to the days of our own beloved Asa Gray, yet no man who essays to 
explore the domain of plant knowledge, whether as student, investigator, 
or philosopher, can afford to be without an understanding of its main tenets, 
based upon spirited contact with the plants of the field and upon ability to 
localize and identify individuals engaging his attention. 
As somewhat of an accompaniment to these thoughts, but quite as an 
independent theme, I bespeak consideration to the matter of names. So 
fully have the taxonomists been shoved aside in recent years that devotion 
to the task of disentangling, rectifying, and correctly assorting the mass of 
names in any group of plants appears to many botanists as a work of superer- 
ogation, largely futile, and almost finical. They are reputed to be meddlers, 
with a penchant for displacing well known names by unfamiliar ones, and 
possessed of an insatiable and egotistical desire to see their own names 
appended to as many Latin designations as unlimited juggling may seem 
to give warrant. Moreover, there is apparently a feeling that there are 
names enough in use, at least enough for all except a few rare species in 
out-of-the-way regions yet to be brought to light by explorers; and that if 
the nomenclaturists would let them alone we should not be obliged to learn 
a new set of names, and to puzzle over their identity with the old ones, 
every time a fresh work on botany comes from the press. 
There is plenty of justification for irritation over the nomenclature 
situation. All will agree that each plant should have its fixed name inde- 
pendent of any particular botanist's certification. But we are far from that 
goal at present. Why? Is it an impossible goal, or do we needlessly 
muddle the situation and retard progress? 
Of course every active systematic botanist knows how false is the 
prevalent idea that most plants have been sufficiently studied to make 
their identification as species no longer uncertain. Let it be remembered 
how few years ago it has been since we became aware that the plantains 
and dandelions in our lawns were not each one species, as the botanical 
manuals stated, but that each comprised two species and well defined. 
In my garden I have grown for a number of years a delectable small fruit, 
