124 BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN MEMOIRS 



a little later the prepared drug and paying little or no attention to 

 its origin. Thus the two professions developed along diverging lines. 



In the meantime, the invention and development of the microscope 

 opened new and interesting fields to the botanists as well as to other 

 scientists and also resulted in the rise of bacteriology, which has had 

 such a marked influence on many lines of work, especially medicine. 



At the same time the scientific study of agriculture was beginning 

 to attract attention but, unfortunately, it is not an outgrowth of 

 botany. Chemistry became the first sponsor for this new field of 

 research and the first directors of many of our American agricultural 

 experiment stations were chemists; they studied the soils and de- 

 veloped formulas for fertilizers — for what? To make plants grow, 

 to increase plant production, and thus the problem of plant growth 

 was taken by the chemists instead of the botanists. 



Horticulture was very closely associated with botany and the 

 developments of horticulture and botany were combined in many of 

 our agricultural colleges. In many cases these soon came to be 

 known as departments of horticulture, the botany becoming a vanish- 

 ing factor; but in later years botany has re-entered these colleges as 

 an independent, but in many cases a secondary subject. In those 

 agricultural colleges in which botany has had a continuous existence, 

 the lines of research were by no means the same. In some cases, they 

 studied weeds and devised methods for their control; in others, they 

 co-operated with the horticulturists in the study, introduction and 

 improvement of valuable food and fiber plants; in others they studied 

 the causes and methods of controlling plant diseases, but in many 

 cases the second phase of the subject was quickly taken over by the 

 now independent departments of horticulture. 



It is impossible to tell just what the result would have been if 

 our botanists of a quarter of a century ago had been as energetic in 

 the development of the applied side of botany as the chemists were 

 in the development of the applied side of chemistry. But it is reason- 

 able to suppose that the results would have been similar, and that we 

 would have today, not only the applied phases of botany, but we 

 would also have far more workers on technical problems. 



The future of botany in America is brighter that at any time in 

 its history. It is a recognized subject in our universities, in arts and 

 in agricultural colleges. It is recognized, both as a cultural subject 

 of great value and interest and as a science with a direct bearing on 

 the affairs of mankind. The botany of today means not only tax- 

 onomy, morphology, cytology and physiology as purely scholastic 

 subjects but all in their relation to applied plant physiology, plant 

 breeding and plant pathology with a direct bearing on horticulture, 

 agronomy and forestry. 



