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nature brings knowledge. To serve a community by bringing its 
children into contact with nature is a great educational service. 
Perhaps the most significant contact with nature is the handling 
of plants. We are seeking now for an army of people with some 
experience in handling plants; for more people who will cultivate 
plants wherever space permits. You have been made to realize, 
in these days of testing our resources, that the most important 
material problem we are facing as a nation is the problem of food- 
production and conservation. Food-production has lagged far 
behind population, and this increasing gap must be closed up. 
Our science of transportation has far outstripped our science of 
food-production, so that we have come to depend not only upon 
a diminishing food supply but also upon transporting that supply 
across a continent. To learn to grow plants and to grow them 
everywhere, especially near our great centers of population, is a 
crying need. 
The development of home gardens, therefore, is not merely a 
service for social betterment that all recognize, but it is becoming 
more and more a public necessity. Any institution that gives you 
and your children this training is not merely an educational in- 
stitution, but also a public benefactor. A botanic garden doing 
such work is like a power house, radiating energy throughout the 
community. Such training is an equipment which not only en- 
riches life, but it is also an equipment for service. In providing 
such an opportunity, a city can do nothing better for its young 
people and its homes, and through them for itself. 
These two contributions, social and educational, seem very 
obvious, but the third contribution needs fuller explanation. 
3. The third is the scientific contribution. This I regard as 
your great opportunity, and I wish to help you realize it. We 
are a very practical people, and unless we can see immediate 
returns from an investment, we decline to undertake it. Very 
few people appreciate what it has taken to make things practical. 
We speak of fundamental science and practical science; some- 
times we call these two phases pure science and applied science. 
The general impression is that pure science holds no relation to 
public welfare, and that applied science serves our needs. You 
should know that all applied science depends upon pure science ; 
