4 The Living Plant 



widest human interest. Indeed, the production of such works 

 may be viewed as the logical aim of all botanical study. 



Such are the principal divisions of botanical science as we 

 know them at present. This book, concerned as it is with the 

 life of plants, deals chiefly with Physiology, but the divisions 

 are interlocked inextricably, and I must perforce make many 

 an excursion into the others. This science, and all science, is a 

 unit, and subdivisions thereof are nothing other than a concession 

 to the limitations of the powers of man. 



As the reader reflects on this matter of the various divisions of 

 botanical science, he cannot but notice how unequal they are in 

 apparent utility to man, and he may even inquire why we should 

 study at all the ones that seem useless. Two reasons at least 

 exist why we should, and do. First, some people take pleasure 

 therein, precisely as do others in art, music, and literature. No- 

 body thinks of asking what use these latter may be, the value of 

 pure pleasure being obvious enough; but the world has mostly 

 yet to learn to extend the same approbation to the seemingly use- 

 less sciences. Second, the history of human progress has shown 

 that the greatest applications of science to the useful arts have 

 sprung from purely scientific investigations of a non-useful type. 

 Nothing, doubtless, could have seemed more useless to cotem- 

 porary critics than the studies of those early naturalists who de- 

 lighted to apply the new-made microscope to the investigation of 

 the living atoms which swarm in slime; and yet from these very 

 studies has come our knowledge of Bacteria, and our power to 

 control the deadliest diseases that scourge mankind. Likewise 

 photography, all the applications of electricity, a vast range of 

 chemical arts, and indeed most others of the wonderful applica- 

 tions of science to utility, have developed incidentally from purely 

 abstract scientific researches made without any regard to useful 

 applications. Furthermore, it is quite impossible to predict at 

 what point upon the general surface of expanding knowledge the 

 next useful discovery will spring forth. In fact there is no natural 



