PART TWO 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF BOTANY 



The automohile, the jet airplane, and the television set, 

 among others, have histories. Likewise academic disciplines 

 of all kinds have their histories, some going back into the 

 distant past. Some fields have split into smaller fragments 

 and new disciplines are appearing. Genetics, formerly taught 

 in botany or zoology departments, is now in its own depart- 

 ment. Likewise bacteriology, forestry, and horticulture have 

 broken off from botany. New fields like electron microscopy, 

 radiation biology, and space biology have sprung up. 



Botany did not originate in the New World, of course, but 

 abroad. The first botanists were amateurs, collecting seeds, 

 bark, leaves, and roots for food, medicine, poisons, and so 

 forth. Formal agriculture followed the aimless plant gather- 

 ing of the nomads of the past, and plant classification was a 

 subsequent development to make order out of the thousands 

 of plants known. Other disciplines followed in response to 

 some need. Anatomy and then physiology followed rapidly. 

 Plants serve man and botanists "interpret" plants for mans 

 use. The first phases were oriented to the practical side of 

 plants and this is still with us. However, pure science became 

 started— the search for knowledge for its own sake— and this 

 has furnished answers to the practical people. Modern botany 

 retains the best of the old knowledge and combines it with 

 the new. Isotopes, electron microscopes, and chromatograms 

 are common sights in modern botanical laboratories. The last 

 chapter in botany is yet to be written, 



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