INTERNATIONAL BOTANICAL CONGRESS. 185 
for horticulturists merely to see—they must also study and reflect ; 
neither is it sufficient for botanists to observe details minutely—they 
must also see the plants on a large scale and in grouped masses. The 
connection of practice with theory, and of art with science, is acknow- 
ledged to be indispensable ; and in accordance with this prevalent 
opinion we here affirm, by our presence in this room, the necessary 
union of botany and horticulture. The aim of my brief observations 
will be to call to mind how they aid each other, and to show how 
much more they might do so. If I am not mistaken, it will follow 
from facts to which I shall allude, that our united efforts, scientific or 
practical, modest though they appear, contribute to increase the well- 
being of man, in all conditions and in all countries. 
1. The Advantages of Horticulture to Botany. 
Let us first mention the services that horticulture renders, or may 
render, to botany. Without being myself a horticulturist, I affirm or 
recognise them willingly, the advancement of science rendering it 
necessary to have recourse to all its collateral branches. 
We no longer live in those times of illusion, when botanists merely 
occupied themselves with European plants, or with a few from the 
East, and, from a spirit of caution rather than from ignorance, pictured 
to themselves all distant countries as possessing much the same general 
vegetation, with a few uncommon or exceptional species. A century 
of discovery has made known the extreme variety of the Floras, the re- 
stricted limits of many species, and the complicated entanglement of 
their geographical distribution. To see all the different forms of vege- 
tation of the world, one would realize in a degree the history of the 
Wandering Jew; besides, with this constant travelling, where would 
be the opportunities for that reflection or study which create true 
science ? 
The traveller is too much exhausted in warm countries, too dis- 
tracted in those temperate regions favourable to active life, and his 
faculties are too much benumbed in the colder regions, to enable him 
to devote himself to minute researches with the lens or the microscope, 
or even to sketch or properly describe that which he has gathered. 
He sees, in passing, a crowd of things, but he can scarcely ever stop 
to enter into details, especially of those that come in rapid succession. 
Rarely can he see the fruit and flower of a species at the same time, 
