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mediate concrete value to mankind, will ultimate 
— 
y weave itself, 
often in an entirely unexpected manner, into close relation to 
matters of undoubted practical value. It is, in fact, one of the 
paradoxes of human progress that certain practical ends are 
often best served by work which is pursued independently of 
immediate practical considerations. No one could have pre- 
dicted, for example, twenty-five years ago, that the purely ab- 
stract studies at that time on the Hertzian waves were to form 
the foundation of modern wireless telegraphy, nor, in 1860, 
that Pasteur’s studies on yeasts and fermentation were to be 
the starting point of our wonderful advance in bacteriology and 
in our knowledge of the germ causes of disease. 
Our ever broadening conceptions of the relations of “pure” 
and “applied” botany are, indeed, rapidly breaking down the 
barriers which, on the supposition that they were actuated by 
different ideals, have been erected between them. As now pur- 
sued by broadly trained investigators, modern “practical” bot- 
any may, indeed, be based on as high ideals as any of those 
which inspire the supposedly ‘“‘non-practical.”” Search for basic, 
fundamental truths, or for the application of principles, or for 
broad conceptions of the interrelations of plants may, un- 
doubtedly, form the ideal of such studies as those on the 
fungous diseases of the sugar-beet or potato or corn, as well 
as that which deals with certain physiological reactions of the 
dandelion. ‘The scientific men themselves, on the one hand, are 
coming to agree that broad, fundamental questions may often 
be solved by means of problems which have an economic end 
immediately in view; and, on the other hand, the public also 
is beginning to appreciate that the pursuit by scientific workers 
of “truth for truth’s sake,” and of broad, fundamental ques- 
tions and principles, ultimately ends in economic gain. 
Botany, then, in the broadest sense, as the scientific study of 
plants from all points of view, their structure, classification, 
activities and interrelations, fae the essential foundation of a 
goodly number of highly specialized, applied superstructures. In 
this paper some of these specialized subjects are enumerated, and 
their intimate connection with the fundamental principles of 
botany are pointed out. 
