Rural Reconstruction in South Africa

Abstract

Botany should be dealt with by a class of sylphs; instead of which its priests are often old and unenthuasistic men. Plod through page after page of botanical description, and where do you find any hint as a rule of the matchless beauty they should be describing? Little if any mention is made of the colour of the "corolla" (as it is correct to call the showy part of the flower), but what the botanist likes to note with so much satisfaction is that the plant iseither glabrous or scabrous, that it is possibly caulescent and that the outer whorl is covered with black emergences. He likes the perianth cup to be short and fleshy and prefers the anthers to be sessile. Not a single exclamation of praise or prayer at the flower displayed. Of course he is right; science must be unemotional.