FORESTRY IN BRITAIN. 75 
continued for long to be, systematic and economic, and it was from 
this point of view that, the herbalist having become the physician, 
botany became so essential a branch of medical study. It is 
noteworthy that as an early practical outcome of the study came 
the establishment of botanic gardens, which, at their institution, 
were essentially what we would now style experimental stations, 
and contributed materially to the introduction and distribution 
of medicinal and economic plants, and to the trial of their products. 
If they are now in many instances simply appendages of teaching 
establishments, or mere pleasure-grounds, we at least in Britain are 
fortunate in possessing an unrivalled institution in the Royal 
Gardens at Kew, which still maintains, and under its present able 
director has enormously developed, the old tradition of botanic 
gardens as a ceutre in our vast empire, thruugh which botany 
renders scientific service to our national progress. 
In Britain, consequent perhaps on our colonial and over-sea 
possessions, the systematic side of botany continued predominant 
long after morphological and physiological work had absorbed the 
attention of the majority of workers and made progress on the 
Continent. Not that we were wanting in a share of such works, 
ouly it was overshadowed by the prevalent taxonomy, which in the 
hands of many no longer bore that relation to its useful applica- 
tions which had in the first instance given it birth, and had become 
little more than a dry system of nomenclature. 
The reaction of a quarter of a century ago, which we owe to the 
direct teaching of Sachs and De Bary and the influence of Darwin, 
many of us can remember: in it some who are here to-day had a 
share. Seldom I think is a revolution in method and ideas of 
teaching and study so rapidly brought about as it was in this 
instance. The morphological and physiological aspect of the 
subject infused a vitality into the botanical work which it much 
needed. The biological features of the plant-world replaced 
technical diagnosis and description as the aim of teachers and 
workers in this field of science. No weightier illustration of the 
timeliness of this change could be found than in the attitude of 
medicine. But a few years ago he would have been rash who 
would predict that botany would for long continue to be recognised 
as a part of university training essential to medical students. Its 
utility as ancillary to materia medica had lost point through the 
removal of pharmacy from the functions of the physician. But 
what do we see now? Not the exclusion of botany from the 
