87 



bring into the market of the future just the same sort of re- 

 lation that the cultivation of Cinchona has done. 



Bacteria are moot creatures ; call them animals if you choose ; 

 call them plants ; but the botanist still looks on them as plants. 

 If it were not for what students have learned of this group of 

 plants we should have no such thing as rational sanitation or 

 aseptic surgery. In a dairy the quality of butter and cheese 

 depends on these lowly creatures ; and what has been made out 

 about them is still unfinished. More and more, scientists in this 

 [line are going to bring practical returns in dollars, with the 

 decimal point moved away off to the right. Soil fertility comes 

 in the same category. One of our American botanists. Dr. 

 Moore, giving attention to the minute creatures, algse, which 

 grow in fresh water everywhere, made a discovery which has 

 enabled any community in this country which has polluted 

 water to purify it. I might give you a dozen other illustra- 

 tions ; but I do not mean to take more time for illustrations ; 

 it is unnecessary: I trust the few I have selected are 

 such as to show you that the botanist is worth something to 

 commerce, to the manufactures and arts. 



But this botanist is not the botanist who picks flowers to 

 pieces and quarrels over the shape of a stamen. He is the bot- 

 anist who, looking to see what there is in the first place, takes 

 scientific interest in the next, and turns himself to that ; and then 

 turns to see what there is of practical utility in the discov- 

 eries that have been made, and makes them directly available 

 for human progress. The man who breeds better plants to 

 grow in your gardens and along your streets, and who has the 

 faculty of the book-agent or the tree-seller of making you buy 

 them and use them, is a man who is doing a great deal for 

 the community in which he operates. 



In conclusion I would like to say that the world to-day is 

 absolutely dependent on the standing and pulling together of 

 individuals and organizations of men. We have gone so far in 

 our civilization that it is impossible for one of us to stand 

 by himself on his own feet and carry along all that he ought 

 to be able to carry along. It is in the touch of elbows and 



