Sooner or later there usually comes to the student of 
botan}^ unless he possesses an ample fortune, the question 
whether or not botany can be made to pay. It is not 
that he is inclined to measure the delights ot botany by 
the single standard of dollars and cents but that he dis- 
covers that dollars and cents must be taken into account. 
He finds that to give more of his time to botany v^ill 
encroach upon the hours devoted to business and it is but 
natural that he should query whether botany and busi- 
ness cannot be combined to the material advantage of 
both. The answer to the question, however, will doubt- 
less read different waj^s to different people and in no case 
can it be an unreserved yes or no. It rather depends upon 
individual circumstances and what one means by making 
botany pay. 
* 
Practically there is no money in botany in the sense of 
a considerable income over and above expenses. The 
amount of good hard "digging" that is required to make 
a successful botanist if applied to the study of law, medi- 
cine, civil engineering or similar studies would yield an 
income many times as great as the average botanist 
enjoys. The best paid man of this class in the United 
States receives a salary of less than six thousand dollars 
while botanists with salaries of three thousand dollars 
annuall^^are so rare as to be curiosities. Such salaries are 
seldom paid to those outside of the larger Universities, a 
thousand dollar salary being usually considered a good 
one, elsewhere. A large number of teaching botanists 
probably receive less. These figures, therefore, need only 
to be compared with those for other professions to show 
that botany does not pay in the pecuniar3^ sense of the 
word. Any skilled mechanic can do as well or better than 
the average botanist and at the same time be under less 
expense for clothes and other necessaries of life. 
