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BOTANY AND COMMERCE. 



William Trelease. 



"^Mr. Toastmaster, ladies and gentlemen : — It strikes me that 

 it is indicative of the times that on the occasion of a gather- 

 ing of scientific men of the State of Illinois in your capital 

 city, you should be entertained by the Chamber of Commerce 

 of that city. Nothing more clearly indicates the recognition on 

 the part of the commercial men who are making the higher 

 life of our time possible, that they are themselves dependent 

 for what they are doing on the results that the scientific ex- 

 perts are placing in their hands as tools to work with. 



In a State like this, flowing with milk and honey, and a 

 land which gushes forth its fatness if you break it, it would 

 seem fitting that your first speaker should be a zoologist or 

 a geologist, but I am delighted that you have selected a botanist 

 as the first speaker, — for if corn is king anywhere in the world, 

 he is certainly king in Illinois; and coupled with King Corn, 

 making one-half of the great eight billion dollars' worth of 

 national products poured into the national granary last year, 

 a few of the other leading products are also vegetable. 



I want to call attention, in passing only, to the fact that 

 nearly all of human life is really dependent directly upon 

 plants, and of course botany is concerned with the study of 

 plants. A large part, an essential part, of our food conies 

 from the vegetable kingdom. A very large and necessary part 

 of what goes into the manufactures and the arts, and the 

 essential part used in healing us, comes from the vegetable 

 kingdom. After all, I take it you do not want me to analyze 

 these, they belong not to the botanist but to the commercial 

 man: it is an actual fact that that which is not patented no 

 longer belongs to the person who brought it forth but belongs 

 to those who know how to use it. But there arc certain other 



