short the time for other work. In Germany they manage the thing better. The ordinary laboratory work is in the hands of assistants, and the professor, besides his lectures, gives his time to advanced students and original work. The question is, Can our colleges pay for more assistants? They have hard enough work to pay the professors, as a rule, but if the public could be made to see the real need of assistants, and recognize the fact that a professor's salary is not large enough for him to pay for assistance out of his own pocket, perhaps, sooner or later, the money might be provided. As far as the professors and instructors in schools and colleges are concerned, they are not so well able to do original work as formerly, owing to the more laborious methods of modern instruction; but it may be that we are in a stage of transition, and that before long the possibility of overdoing instruction to the detriment of research may be felt by those in charge of institutions of learning.
It may be suggested as a possible solution of the difficulty that there should be some professors for teaching and others for research. That is all very well, if you are not going to give ail the money to the one who does the teaching. There is a tendency to regard any salary, no matter how small, as large enough for one who is engaged in research, and the reason usually assigned is absurd, viz., that investigators prefer investigation to any other work. It seems preposterous that the fact that a man's heart is in his work should be made a pretext for paying him less for his work! There are those who prefer teaching to research, and are they paid any the less because they like their teaching? Of the two, the instructor and the investigator, the latter has the more frequent professional calls on his purse even in well-equipped colleges, and statistics are wanting to show that investigators have smaller families to provide for than teachers.
Having considered some of the difficulties in the way of research, we can return to the original question. What sort of botanical investigation is needed in this country? Whatever may be the case in physics and chemistry, it is a fact that the study of natural history in any country passes through stages of development much the same everywhere. In a new country the first work must be almost entirely descriptive and classificatory; and, when this work has reached a sufficiently advanced stage, histology, physiology, and study of life-histories assume more and more importance. In most European countries the first stage has been long past, except as far as some of the lowest forms of plants are concerned, and the greater part of the best work of France and Germany at the present day relates to physiological and developmental subjects. Where do we stand? The question is important, because there is not infrequently a tendency to assume that work in this country is of value only in so far as it is on the same plane and of the same kind as work in Europe. We must be contented to wait a little while, and we do harm rather than good if
