PLANTS AND THEIR USES 
CHAPTER I 
THE STUDY OF PLANTS 
1. Botanical questions. When an unfamiliar plant at- 
tracts our attention usually the first questions we wish to 
ask are: What is it? What is it good for? or What does it do? 
Such questions have been asked from early times about 
plants in all parts of the world, and the classified knowledge 
which has been acquired in endeavoring to answer them has 
given us the science of botany. 
In beginning our study of the subject it will be profitable 
for us to consider in a general way what it really means to 
answer questions of this sort, so that we may appreciate 
something of their importance and what they involve. Each 
- question, as we shall see, has led to numberless others until © 
the science has so broadened as to embrace every reasonable 
inquiry that may be made regarding plants. 
2. The beginnings of botany. Like most people to-day, 
the earliest botanical writers concerned themselves more 
with the uses of plants than with their forms and habits. 
Thus Pliny, the most learned of Roman writers on natural 
history, significantly remarks that there were, to be sure, 
other plants in the hedges, fields, and roadsides than those 
he had described, but they had no names and were of no use. 
It is surely only natural that the uses of plants should be what 
first arouses our interest in them. Every one can appreciate 
most readily the advantages of knowing all we can about 
things which contribute so greatly to our welfare. 
3. Our dependence upon plants. Let us consider for a 
moment how much we depend upon the vegetable kingdom. 
Every one knows that in all we eat and drink, the nutritious, 
_ strength-giving part comes either from plants or animals. 
As the animals which yield us food depend in their turn either 
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