268 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



grower if we can help him solve some of these problems. There is too 

 wide a gap between the producer and consumer and there has been 

 no bridge sufficiently strong to span this abyss. The foundation is 

 bad and when either party attempts to cross, down goes the bridge. 

 So it is with the consumer or producer if either one tries to take ad- 

 vantage of the other. 



REPORT OF THE BOTANIST 



By PROF. FRANK D. KERN. 



In making this report, your speaker has some misgivings. In the 

 first place, he has not resided in the State long enough to feel thor- 

 oughly acquainted with the problems offered in such a diversified 

 length of time that a report of this sort would be expected. 



Botany is a broad and fundamental subject. As a division of 

 science there comes under the head of botany much information 

 which is of interest and importance to the agriculturist; but it is my 

 experience that few people who want such information know where 

 to look for it. This point is well brought out by an examination of 

 correspondence. If a man wishes information about farm animals 

 he has a pretty good idea that he should consult someone interested 

 in animal husbandry; if interested in farm crops, he looks to an 

 agronomist, and so forth. Questions, however, which ultimately 

 come to a botanist are pretty likely to be asked of someone else first, 

 or addressed to a general board or to an institution. This is not 

 strange, after all, for botany deals with plants in all their phases. 



While it does not represent any industry, it is very closely related 

 to several. Forestry and horticulture are very much dependent on 

 botany. The whole problem of soils and their handling and fertiliza- 

 tion is related to the physiology of plants, which is but a phase of 

 botany. Bacteriology, dealing with a particular group of plants, 

 may now seem very distinct, but it is simply a split from the general 

 subject of botany. Scientific plant breeding has been developed be- 

 cause of an outside demand, but it owes its methods and rapid ad- 

 vancement to the fundamentals coming directly from botany. The 

 latest and one of the most important phases of botany deals with the 

 diseases of plants. This phase we know as plant pathology. While 

 there is some tendency to separate it from the mother science, I 

 think I may say safely that it is still to be considered as belonging 

 to botany. 



To be more specific, I may now treat briefly some of the practical 

 botanical questions w^hich are of general interest as is evidenced by 

 the character of our correspondence. In the first place, I may speak 

 of the requests which come to us to name and identify plants; the 

 species are likely to be anything from grasses to trees. Very fre- 

 quently the specimens are entirely inadequate, being fragmentary 



