44 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
its fairness, dying to the ghayness of the common-place, or fading to the twilight 
indistinctness of forgotten things. 
It is worth while then, on occasion to stop for a moment in this unending 
course of patriotic duty faithfully performed, to sum up some of the res gestae, 
the things really done in the nobler way, even when none of the other things 
demanded by our day and age have been left undone, or may now go upon the 
record. As a matter of fact, the science of Iowa, of the world, is abundantly 
richer today than twenty-five years ago, and this advance is owing in almost 
every case to the activity of men set by school or college, each in his place, 
to teach. 
Before setting in order, as may be, the history of Iowa botany for the quarter 
of a century now closing, it may be well to note in a few sentences the general 
progress of the science in the world. For forty years at least the great trend 
of science in every field and laboratory has been toward that which is imme- 
diately and directly practical. How better to make oil, or gas, or steel; how 
better to develop and manage the electric current; how more profitably to extract 
gold and silver from their ores; how better to raise corn or cattle; how to 
control disease, — these have been ostensibly the triumphant displays of science 
in all the later decades of our history. The men who pay the taxes, the men 
who pay a large part of them at least, the men who create great foundations, can 
see and understand and put to profit all these things, and it is therefore but 
natural if the children of wisdom have sought thus to be justified. 
But after all, our practical triumphs are again only the smaller fraction ol 
scientific accomplishment. Such reckoning leaves out entirely the world of our 
intellectual living where the influence of science of every sort has been simply 
omnipotent and universal. The whole world of philosophy, letters, art, is 
different today, — is different because of science, and all apart from any so-called 
practical results of scientific research — but even so, all practical triumphs are 
but the outcome of pure science; pure science somewhere, perchance obscurely 
but patiently wrought out, has made these visible achievements possible, and 
did research for its own dear sake but once for a single generation fail, not 
only would inspiration grow dull indeed but invention itself would fail and 
even present attainments be forgotten as are the lost arts of other days. 
However this may all be, whatever our evident real trend, the most con- 
spicuous change in all science, whether pure or applied, and no less in botany, 
has come in the direction of differentiation and -specialization. We have to-day 
all sorts of botanists, each pursuing his own particular problems. The myco- 
logist to-day is not presumed to know the number of chromosomes in the nucleus 
of a lily, nor does the paleobotahist seek the identity of the algal component 
of the lichens ; albeit he is inclined in these later days to search with Chodat 
the structure of woody stems, a line of simple investigation which forty years 
ago led Dawson to assign seed plants to the Devonian. Exarch, mesarch, etc., 
suggest at last an effort to interpret the obscure beginnings of the trees. The 
bacteriologist smiles at Mendel’s law, and though scarce willing to admit tem- 
perature as as great a factor in the forms of life as in the forms of water, he 
begs to remark that in his earlier studies he has somewhere heard of the 
response which plants of every rank make to environmental changes. The 
taxonomist has found undreamed differentiation to engage his time and toil; 
oaks and haws, birches and willows, shift and change in kaleidoscopic swiftness. 
