Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/324

310 we teach that there is no work worth doing except that done in the laboratories of Germany. It often seems as if we were producing a set of precious little prigs, when one sees young men turning up their noses at all those who do any work not involving the most complicated microscopical manipulations. It is well to have our standard high, but it should not be unattainable. We may well set before our young men such models as De Bary, Sachs, Strasburger, and others; but it is just possible that a young man who is determined to be a De Bary, a Sachs, a Strasburger, or nothing, may have to adopt the latter alternative. The trouble is, too many young men assume that the work which they are destined to do is of the highest grade, and they expect to be provided with all the refined apparatus and complete equipment which the leaders of botany abroad possess. They will not begin the simplest thing without an array of reagents which would be the envy of a good many chemists, and the number of staining-fluids which they must have around them would make the rainbow blush at its own poverty. One young man thinks he can't do any work because he has not a Jung microtome. Another has been unable to do anything during a vacation at the sea-shore because he had no osmic acid. To such persons one is inclined to say that he would be thankful if they would do anything.

As far as the kind of investigation needed in botany is concerned, we stand where Germany formerly stood, not where she now stands. It is of no use to say that descriptive systematic work is not highly rated in Germany. Our country is so large, and some parts of it are so little explored, that descriptive work has by no means reached its limit. The only question is, how to have it well done; and this brings us to a consideration of the comparative advantages of systematic work and histological and developmental work for different classes of workers. One weak point in our botanical work has been that too many persons have attempted to write on descriptive subjects. Strange as it may seem to some ears, it appears to me that histological and developmental work is what is best adapted for non-professional botanists, including those who do not devote their whole time to the subject, and who as a rule have not sufficiently complete libraries and herbaria to enable them to do descriptive work well. This does not apply, of course, to the older generation of botanists, few of whom have had the training necessary for histological work, but it does apply to the younger generation. Inasmuch as the larger libraries and collections are in the colleges and larger cities, descriptive work, if it is not to be shabbily done, must be done by persons connected with colleges, or by those who are so situated that they can easily visit herbaria and libraries. Furthermore, descriptive work should be in the hands of a comparatively few experts, for long experience is necessary to a good result; whereas the questions in histology, physiology, and development are very numerous, some of them of small range,