424 * BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



thus to the happiness and general welfare of the community. 

 Nevertheless many, even of our best-informed people, not only 

 have no appreciation of its power to please or benefit, but actually 

 regard it with prejudice, so vague and erroneous are their ideas 

 concerning it. 



Some suppose it treats merely of flowers, and consequently 

 while well enough as a pastime for school-girls, is utterly un- 

 worthy the attention of a sensible and industrious man or woman. 

 They have an idea that the sunflower, the poppy, the hollyhock, 

 and such like blossoms, are the loftiest, most intricate and most 

 profitable themes with which the botanist has to do, — which is 

 just as correct as to suppose the science of anthropology to con- 

 sist in the study of hats and bonnets. Flowers are, indeed, con- 

 spicuous and important parts of plants, where they occur, and 

 well worthy our admiration and study. But a large portion of 

 the species of the vegetable world are fiowerless, yet they must 

 be included in botanical science, and we shall find that the knowl- 

 edge of some of them is of the utmost importance to agriculture. 



Others, again, imagine the chief business of the botanist to be 

 the gathering and pressing of specimens which, in their appear- 

 ance, are calculated to awaken feelings of disgust rather than of 

 pleasure in the breast of the unscientific observer. Dried plauts 

 are of much service for purposes of investigation and reference, 

 but their acquisition is by no means the chief end of the science. 

 Many a person has collected an admirable herbarium who was no 

 botanist in any proper sense of the term. 



As chemistry originated in alchemy, which was a search for the 

 elixir of life, destined to cure all diseases, so the early botanists 

 were incited to a critical examination of plants by a desire to pro- 

 cure new medicines, and ascribed remedial virtues to every 

 species, even to the most inert. The first work on botany in the 

 English language was entitled, in the antique style, " The Great 

 Herbal whiche giveth parfyct knowledge and understandyng of 

 all manner of Ilerbes & their gracyous vertues whiche God hathe 

 ordeyned for our prosperous welfare and helth, for they hele and 

 cure all manner of dyseases & seknesses that fall or misfortune to 

 all manner of creatoures of God created, practysed by many ex- 

 pert & wyse masters, as Avicenna, &c, &c, prented by me Peter 

 Traveris, 1516." The title of one printed in London in 1551 is, 

 " A new llerbal "wherein the names of herbs in Greke, Latin, Eng- 

 lysh, Dutch, Frenche, and in the Potecaries and llerbaries Latin, 



