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things that I do wish to present as still belonging to the bot- 

 anist. They will belong, in the course of the generation now 

 living, in almost equal part to commerce and manufacture. 

 A generation ago a botanist traveling through the northwestern 

 Canadian region made a casual observation of the trees and 

 plants he saw growing there and found some plants that gen- 

 erally grow where wheat and corn are grown. To-day all of 

 that northwestern country has been converted into one of the 

 great wheat fields of the world. The way was pointed by a 

 botanist, traveling through the country, looking at the vegetation 

 alone. To-day there is never a question of introducing crops 

 into a new district without first studying the life zone the 

 district belongs to; and year by year the po'ssibilities of ag- 

 riculture are being increased, through simple observation of 

 what animals and plants naturally grow in the region that the 

 plants to be cultivated come from and that you propose culti- 

 vating them in. 



There has been of late years an application of botanical 

 knowledge in more than one commercial field, just as great, 

 just as extensive as this. Your own state of Illinois is in- 

 creasing enormously the product of that crop which is the 

 domineering and dominating crop of this country — corn — by 

 simple observation of, first, what constitutes good corn ; second, 

 how certain changes can be made in corn which will give it 

 greater value ; and, third, how those changes can be brought 

 about. You are spending enormous sums of money; other 

 states are doing the same. You are getting returns year by 

 year for what you put in it, and the return is going to be in- 

 creased on greater investment. It is not what you get this 

 year but what you get as long as corn is cultivated — until others 

 have, in some way, improved upon these gifts that are now 

 being made. Our Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, while 

 he was in Minnesota, was active in breeding a new variety of 

 wheat. Five years ago that variety of wheat had increased 

 acreage enough to give something like a million dollars added 

 revenue. I might give other lessons pertaining not simply to 

 field-crops ; orchards, nut-bearing trees — it matters not what, 



