Bulletin - United States National Museum - Smithsonian Institution

56 FLORA OF WASHINGTON AND VICINITY.
garded as productive solely of evil, may be made an agency of good.
If, for examijle, it could become as much of a disgrace to be found
ignorant of the flora or fauna of one's native place as it now is to be
found ignorant of the rules of social etiquette or the contents of the
last new novel, devotees of botany and natural history would immedi-
ately become legion, and the woods and fields would be incessantly
searched for specimens and objects of scientific interest. It should be
the acknowledged work of educationalists to make science fashionable,
and call to their aid these powerful social sentiments in demanding the
recognition of its legitimate claims.
Of all the natural sciences, that of botany is the most easily con-
verted into a branch of culture. Its objects appeal directly to the
highest esthetic faculties. It naturally allies itself with the arts of
drawing, painting, and sketching, and the deeper the insight into its
masteries the more strongly does it appeal to the imagination. Its pur-
suit, besides being the best possible restorer of lost, and i^reserver of
good health, is a perpetual source of the purest and liveliest pleasure.
The companionship of plants, which those who do not know them can-
not have, is scarcely second to that of human friends. The botanist is
never alone. Wherever he goes he is surrounded by these interesting
companions. A source of pure delight even where they are all famil-
liarly known to him, unlike those of his own kind, they grow in interest
as their acquaintance grows less intimate, and in all his travels they
multiply immensely his resources of enjoyment. The man of science
wonders what the unscientific can find to render travel a pleasure, and
it must be confessed that a great many tourists of both sexes go at the
behest of fashion, and care little more for Nature when crossing the Alps
than did Julius Caesar, who could only complain of the bad roads and
while away the hours in writing his grammatical treatise, De Analog ia.
While all forms of natural science, so far from paralyzing the esthetic
faculties, tend powerfully to quicken them, that of natural history, and
especially of botany, awakens such an interest in Nature and her beautiful
objects that those who have once tasted pleasures of this class may
well consider other pleasures insipid.
But notwithstanding these attractions, which botany possesses above
other sciences, there exists among a small class of scientific men a dis-
position to look down upon it as lacking scientific dignity, as mere
pastime for school-girls or fanatical specialists. This feeling is most
obvious among zoologists, who, some of them, affect to disdain the more
humble forms of life and the simplicity of the tame and stationary plant.