ich is needed.

I call to mind a case in point. A young lady had a great taste for
drawing, as well as a good scientific mind. She became acquainted with a
physician who was making original studies in the microscopic germs of
disease. They worked side by side. The physician detected the
animalcules and plants and crystals with the microscope, and explained
to her how he wanted them represented. She was intelligent enough to
understand his explanations and skillful enough to make the drawings.
His own drawings were too clumsy to convey his idea, but with her help
his observations were made available for others.

Suppose a girl enjoys botany. I know a woman who has made lichens the
study of a life-time. This has been a source of high culture as well as
of pleasure to herself, for, as she says, this is the most intellectual
family of plants, and no one can study their structure without being
brought face to face with profound questions. Moreover, this study has
opened her eyes and those of her friends to much beauty; for until we
begin to look at lichens we are often conscious of hardly more than a
dull wall of rock or the dead gray wood of old buildings, when in truth
every inch of their surface is decorated with rich forms and delicate
colors. She won a certain measure of fame by the discovery of a new
lichen, but she did better than that, she made one of the finest
collections in the United States for a local city museum, so that the
fruits of her labor were thus accessible to future lichenists; and she
gave much needed help to geologists in investigating fossil lichens.

Local collections of any kind are valuable. A young lady who
superintends the making of one in the town or village where she lives
will learn much herself, and she will attract many other young people to
pursue an innocent and healthful pleasure, so becoming a power in the
community. There are few such collections now in existence, and any girl
living in a small place who has a taste for science may act as a
pioneer. She can begin modestly with a single case at her own house, or,
better still, at the public library, and she will be surprised to see
how fast the museum will grow, and how useful and delightful it will
be.

If a woman likes to experiment with plants, let her study botany at the
Harvard Annex. There she will learn how many questions in vegetable
physiology are awaiting investigation. Darwin studied one twining plant
after another till