Summer Meeting. 27 



same footing in the struggle for existence as the teeming miUions of 

 other organisms whose right and power to dominate could probably not 

 be denied nor prevented. The eye cannot say to the ear, "I have no 

 need of thee." The horticulturist cannot say to the astronomer, nor 

 the physicist, nor the chemist, nor the biologist, "I have no need of 

 thee." 



Horticulture is related in a thousand ways on every hand to every 

 department of human knowledge, and the horticulturist should seek to 

 know of these relations. How can he better seek to know than by study- 

 ing all the sciences, though their relation be remote and scarcely per- 

 ceptible. He cannot most effectually study while he plants, and prunes, 

 and plows, hence the necessity for broad, general education in early 

 life preparatory to this great and profitable vocation whose highest suc- 

 cess is coincident with the highest culture of the mind. 



Fortunately our best horticulturists are themselves biologists, at least 

 within the limits of their time for study, and have themselves contrib- 

 uted much of the biological knowledge necessary for the most effectual 

 cultivation of horticultural products. 



But perhaps the chief biological contributions to horticulture have 

 come from biologists who have given their entire energy, using strictly 

 scientific methods, to the study of living organisms, regardless of their 

 1 elation to horticulture. Pasteur studied bacteria with a view to know- 

 ing their nature, and the nature of their products, not thinking, perhaps, 

 how the knowledge acquired might afterwards be used in the successful 

 struggle against the ravages upon the plants and products of the horti- 

 culturist. 



The biologist whose researches upon the physiological functions of 

 plants proved that most plants must have atmospheric ox}gen in con- 

 tact with all parts of their surfaces for purposes of respiration, was not 

 searching for an explanation of the practical necessity of planting fruit 

 trees in well drained soil. 



The biologists who have so carefully determined the life history 

 of so many parasitic fungi, and so many noxious insects, were seek- 

 ing primarily to know the interesting characteristics of such organisms. 

 But upon this knowledge the practical horticulturist has based his meth- 

 ods of dealing with them as enemies to his cultivated plants. 



Wallace and Darwin, in collecting their vast volumes of data, and 

 formulating the remarkable theory of evolution, were probably seeking 

 a rational system of philosophy upon which to base an explanation of 

 the marvelous diversities and affinities among organisms, rather than 

 a practical, working basis, founded upon natural laws, upon which suc- 

 cessful horticulturists build all modern methods of plant breeding, with 



