64 What is Botany ? 
sound one, it cannot be a tenable position to claim that the scope 
of the general teaching at any school of botany is a personal matter 
of minor importance. Such a position fails when examined either 
from the point of view of the reputation of the school or the 
equipment of its students. 
The living plant yields place to nothing in its scientific interest 
for investigation at the present and in the immediate future ; partly 
because of the wealth of problems presented and partly because 
the scope of experimentation is almost unlimited, not even 
checked yet hy sentimentality. Whole ranges of experimental work 
exhibit the plant as amazingly labile,while other types of experiment 
bring out equally impressive stability. To correlate all this into 
a well-balanced whole is an attractive and imposing objective. 
Finally it may be urged, without any real paradox, that it is 
just for students who do not propose to become botanists and 
whose sole experience of our science will be one general course of 
botany, that it is most important that the course should give a 
survey of the whole sweep of aspects here indicated, so that these 
students may not pass through our schools without being compelled 
to feel respect for the scope of the subject and the problems that lie 
before us, as well as satisfaction in acquiring the body of knowledge 
already organised: for while in truth their acquired knowledge will 
certainly fade their respect may often remain to our permanent 
gain. 
F. F. BLACKMAN. 
January , 1919. 
