The Plant World 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF POPULAR BOTANY 



VoL V. APRIL, 1903. No. 4. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR THE PRESERVATION OF OUR 



NATIVE PLANTS.^ 



By F. H. Knowlton. 



AS man began to pass from the so-called pre-human state into the 

 human state, he doubtless early made a crude classification of 

 the plants by which he found himself surrounded, distinguish- 

 ing those that could in one way or another be made useful from those 

 found from experience to be without value, which latter he presumably 

 soon further subdivided into those distinctly harmful and those that 

 were simply without any useful properties. Later, probably as a result 

 of increasing numbers, he was forced to occupy new territory, where he 

 found himself surrounded by new plants and animals of which he ac- 

 quired knowledge and, when possible, adapted to his needs. It seems 

 beyond dispute that for many centuries early man wandered over wide 

 areas, driven hither and thither in his pursuit of means of subsistence, 

 and so it came to be established that the animals and plants in nature 

 belonged to him who could take and hold them. Notwithstanding the 

 fact that certain prescribed areas came to be recognized as the " hunting 

 grounds " of the individual, the family, the tribe or the nation, countless 

 generations passed before private ownership of the soil was established 

 as we know it at the present day. Plants and animals were, in large 

 measure, common property. But with advancing civilization private 

 ownership became more and more firmly fixed, and carried with it, as a 

 matter of course, jurisdiction over the plants and animals, but as wild 



*A warded the first prize of fifty dollars, competition of 1902, from the Caroline 

 and Olivia Phelps Stokes Fund for the Preservation of Native Plants. Reprinted 

 from the Journal of the.' New York Botanical Garden, Vol. Ill, No. 27. 1902. 



