MODERN APPLICATIONS OF BOTANY 
MEL T. COOK 
New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station 
It is very doubtful if any science is so thoroughly misunderstood 
by the public as the science of botany. To the average layman it is 
usually a study of flowers which usually involves harmless collections, 
classifications and mysterious Latin names; a study for the faddist; 
a study without applications of any value whatever. It is strange 
that a subject dealing with organisms upon which we are dependent 
for practically all of our food, clothing and fuel, a large part of the 
material for building and the manufacture of useful implements of 
various kinds, and most of our drug products should be so misunder- 
stood. Yet, even the educated layman knows more about the Panama 
canal than he does about wheat, more about flying machines than he 
does about potatoes, and more about the Woolworth building than 
he does about cabbage. The names of great and near great military 
leaders, statesmen, ministers, physicians, architects, theatrical stars, 
ball players and pugilists are familiar to those millions, while very 
few can name a single person who has contributed to the feeding and 
clothing of mankind. In fact, few people, even among the educated 
classes, realize that agriculture, horticulture and forestry are in reality 
specialized branches of botany. 
A brief statement of the early history of the subject may offer an ex- 
planation of this anomalous position of our science. Botany had its 
rise in the development of the medical professions, in the efforts of the 
practitioner to determine the uses of plants in the art of healing. 
This resulted in the study of local flora of a number of the most 
advanced countries and also the search for plants in foreign countries. 
Very naturally, the great number of species of plants forced these 
early students to formulate some system of classification whereby 
their materials might be catalogued. With their increasing knowledge 
of these species, it became necessary to devise new systems until finally 
this phase of the subject became all important. In the meantime, 
the medical profession gradually discontinued the use of the less 
important of the medicinal plants for those that were most easily 
obtained, most economical in preparation and most efficacious in 
use. A little later, we find the physician studying the crude drug and 
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