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enquiry for the botanist and the one by means of which he comes most 

 frequently in contact with the unscientific pubHc. Now, there is no 

 place where such investigations can be carried on so conveniently as at 

 a properly equipped Botanic Garden, where plants can be grown 

 under observation and examined, at all stages of development, by in- 

 vestigators specially trained to understand and make the most of what 

 they see, and also fully equipped with the necessary apparatus and 

 literature. Such knowledge as we have, as to the value for food of 

 most of the more important products of the vegetable kingdom, has 

 been derived from the aboriginal inhabitants of the countries where the 

 plants producing them occur in a state of nature ; but the scientific 

 botanist has added very much indeed to this list of useful plants from 

 his knowledge of other species in the same or closely allied families. 

 On the other hand in medical botany the useful knowledge derived 

 from aboriginal sources is comparatively small, by far the larger 

 proportion of the valuable vegetable remedies having been discovered 

 by the scientific chemist as a result of direct chemical analysis of plants, 

 aided by experiment or actual knowledge of the effects produced upon 

 the human frame by the various products obtained. 



A subject of great interest to everybody and one which is 

 frequently made an excuse by ill-mformed people for not studying wild 

 plants, is the fear of being poisoned. Strangely enough this fear never 

 troubles them with regard to cultivated and greenhouse plants where a 

 much larger proportion of poisonous species is to be found than is the 

 case in the woods around us. As a matter of fact poisonous plants in 

 Canada are exceedingly rare. The Poison Ivy (Rhus Toxicodendron ) 

 is the only plant in this part of Canada, which is poisonous to the 

 touch, and even with regard to this, although it is so virulent in the 

 southern states it is, as you all know, an extremely rare thing to find 

 anyone affected by it here. There are, also, far fewer plants than most 

 people think which are actually poisonous, even when taken internally ■ 

 and anyone with a very small amount of knowledge and common sense 

 is warned against these by their acrid taste or nauseous odour. This, 

 I have no doubt, is the reason why cattle and wild animals which feed 

 on vegetation are so seldom poisoned. The poisonous plants are dis- 

 tasteful to them and are not eaten in any quantity when their dangerous 



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