512 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



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all, means nothing else but a rudimentary knowledge of the laws 

 governing the lives of a multitude of primitive vegetable organisms, 

 should be of the highest value to everybody, and should not be with- 

 held from our youths. Closely connected with the knowledge of 

 Bacteriology, in the restricted sense, is a knowledge of fermentative 

 processes generally. This, again is a matter which deserves our 

 attention, and there are no difficulties in imparting to boys and girls 

 just enough knowledge of fermentation to make them realise the 

 processes which go on in making of bread, cheese, wine, beer, and 

 many other articles of common use, and make them also understand 

 the processes by which fermentation can be avoided if not desired, 

 and, mind all this this can be done by teaching the principles of 

 Botany. 



Botany is, as you know, in a way the handmaid of Medicine, 

 and other useful applications of it could be mentioned, but I will 

 only refer to one in particular — Agriculture, in the widest sense of 

 the term, including Horticulture and Forestry. Agriculture is 

 nothing but applied Botany, and success in Agriculture means in 

 most cases the successful application of botanical principles to special 

 cases. Now, the majority of the pupils of our schools, whether male 

 or female, return to farms where Agriculture is of the utmost import- 

 ance.- Let me show by a few examples only (which, however, could 

 be multiplied to a considerable extent) how a knowledge of Botany 

 could be of direct use to them. Every student of Botany learns that 

 ordinary green plants require certain inorganic materials if they are 

 to grow at all. In manuring ground we supply deficiencies which 

 either were there originally, or were caused by taking away crops. 

 Knowing this, we should get our soils analysed to find out their 

 deficiencies in order to make them good in a rational and economical 

 manner. Yet many of our farmers go on year after year by rule 

 of thumb, if they do manure, or they do not manure at all, because 

 their fathers and grandfathers did not do so on the same plot of 

 ground, quite forgetting that if there was a sufficient amount of 

 the necessary materials for plant growth 20 or even 50 years ago, 

 there is no guarantee that sufficient is left for the crops at the present 

 time. A little knowledge of these matters would frequently turn 

 a trifling expense into a big profit. Then there is the rotation of 

 crops, so largely practised in Europe, to which our farmers would 

 take more readily, to their great advantage, if they knew the prin- 

 ciples which led to its adoption in other countries. Another important 

 matter is the selection of seeds for sowing. One would think that 

 every rational man would only sow the best seed and only pure seed, 

 and yet it is a common practice in this country to reserve the tailings, 

 the unsaleable seeds, for sowing. Thus seeds of crops, the vitality 

 of which is impaired, are used for sowing, and mixed with them 

 are countless numbers of seeds of weeds. No wonder a farmer once 

 said at a public meeting at Alexandria, " that farming was going 

 to the dogs, for when he sowed wheat it turned into drabok " (a 

 most objectionable grass). He was quite unconscious of the fact that 

 he sowed year after year vast quantities of seeds of drabok, which 



