80 NEBUASKA STATIC ilOK'I'l (;U LTUHAL SOCIKTV. 



had some sort of knowledge of the varieties which should be grown. The 

 next year more seeds were planted and very diffeient results secured 

 which did not agree with those of the preceding years, so the work was 

 never done, and you couldn't expect to finish it. It was really a 

 horticultural merry-go-round on which they were riding and they could 

 not tell when they went past one what scenery they had seen the preced- 

 ing years. They could not tell that they had ever been upon that road be- 

 fore. Some of the more brilliant minded horticulturists have seen the way 

 out of the wilderness. We botanists congratulate ourselves that the wa> 

 out leads toward where we had already pitched our tents and had for years 

 been at work. In other words, the horticultural people are appreciating 

 more the need of investigation, and particularly along strictly botanical, 

 lines. I want to indicate what some of these directions are in which work 

 is being done, and more work is being done because I am welcoming you to 

 an institution which is related to you in- the capacity of a productive 

 machine, in a way, to discover some of these things you want to know, 

 in a way which you cannot discover because a large establishment is 

 required that must have co-operation and division of labor, and to do 

 what the old horticulturist thought he could do more satisfactorily is 

 now done by experts employed tor that purpose. 



I want to indicate some of the directions in which work is much 

 needed. You will see all these directions lead toward what we have 

 been calling pure science. One of the first is knowledge of breeding, 

 V. hich in the last ten years has received a stimulus, employed in new- 

 directions, and you might say a new science has been created, and plant 

 breeding, as we know it today, was practically non-existent ten years 

 ago on account of new methods of work that Lave been introduced. In 

 fact, the whole idea underlying the methods of breeding has been fun- 

 damentally changed. Where ten years ago a "man to breed plants had 

 to depend upon his memory to ascertain the facts, he would be con- 

 sidered an utter scalawag today; now he must depend on written records 

 to show in which direction he was going from year to year. That is 

 one direction in which scientific work is needed. 



There is still another side which should be very highly developed, 

 and that is our knowledge of the nutrition of plants. All nurserymen, 

 in fact, need to know more about that than botanists could tell them, 

 so we must push the work in that direction, because on that depends 

 the successful propagation of plants. So that again is one of the direc- 

 tions in which the work must be pushed on. 



In the old horticultural meetings two subjects were always dis- 

 cussed — insect pests and diseases of plants. I can remember when I was 

 not over ten years old, and I presume these subjects were discussed pre- 

 vious to that. The old meetings were full of discussions of that kind. 

 Of course, a great deal of progress has been made. We can hardly 

 realize how far we have advanced. Such a proposition as spraying has 

 practically gotten out of the control of the botanist, even out of the 

 control of the scientist. We now look upon it as an ordinary operation 



