8 PREFACE 



and the industrial does not dispute, but rather establishes, the ex- 

 istence of a wide border domain between science and industrial 

 art where botanist and industralist work side by side upon plant 

 subjects; it may be sympathizingly and intercommunicatively, or it 

 may be ignoring each other's presence; a domain within which 

 nevertheless each should be in touch with the other, because each 

 may, and ought to be helpful to the other, as supplying some data 

 useless for his own purposes but of significance in relation to the 

 other's aims. The recognition of this border-land domain illustrates 

 also, if it does not again directly argue, the distinctness of the two 

 realms of botany and plant industry. Here one may observe that 

 the distinction itself would seem less marked if he who is to set 

 himself to the work of an economic or industrial botanist would 

 first of all equip himself with a knowledge of the principles, and 

 cultivate an interest in the aims, of philosophic and scientific 

 botany; so that the industrial botanist as author might always 

 have two reports to make upon any piece of research, one that 

 should be of economic interest, the other one of interest botanical. 

 It may be that this idea will be found to presuppose the conjunction 

 of the philosophic bent of mind with the industrial ; a combination 

 of two qualities of mind as rare in the world as genius itself, and 

 less desirable. 



In quest, therefore, of a starting point— a first landmark — in the 

 progress of botany, in my understanding of the science, one may 

 pass those authors by w^ho professedly treat of plants from the 

 utilitarian point of view, whether they write of agriculture, 

 horticulture, or of the materia medica. Passing these by, I say, 

 though by no means as not meriting the botanist's attention; for 

 all matters relating to the qualities of plants naturally interest 

 him, unless he be of that school in power a century ago, but now 

 declining in influence, according to whose teachings nothing but 

 dry morphology was of any import. Moreover, to him who, like 

 the farmer, the woodsman, and the primitive pharmacist, has much 

 to do with plants industrially, philosophic ideas may occur about 

 the vegetable kingdom as a whole or in part; and every such idea, 

 though crude, perhaps even erroneous, is a concept essentially 

 botanical. Quite as perfectly so is the distinguishing of different 

 kinds of plants, and the practice of grouping like kinds together 

 under one common (generic) name, which is not only universal, 

 but even a necessity, with those who, like the farmer and gardener, 

 have much to do with a considerable number of plants of different 

 sorts. People following these occupations have actually a system- 



