124 BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN MEMOIRS 
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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. 
