198 INTERNATIONAL BOTANICAL CONGRESS. 
3. The Beneficial Effects of the Association of Botany with Horticulture. 
The pursuit of horticulture demands books and herbaria, as that of 
scientific botany requires cultivated, living plants. Thence the ne- 
cessity, which is more and more recognized, of bringing together the 
materials for comparison in the same town, the same establishment, 
and even under the same administration, organized so as to facilitate 
the use of them. How many institutions in Europe, either private or 
public, would be benefited by this arrangement! How many towns 
and countries are now deficient—some in libraries, some in herbaria, 
some in respect to horticulture! Professional men proffer their com- 
plaint ; let us hope that publie opinion may end by listening to them.* 
he bringing together the means of study, I have said, is desirable. 
Not less so is the interchange of ideas and impressions both of 
botanists and horticulturists. Each of these classes must clearly have 
distinct characteristics ; but the one should be influenced by the other. 
By these means some too retiring dispositions may be brought out, and 
certain dormant powers developed. Horticulture, for instance, has a 
commercial tendency which may be carried too far. Charlatanism may 
slide in amongst flowers. Botany, on the contrary, is a science, and 
consequently rests on the investigation of pure and simple truth. A 
horticulturist who allows himself to be influenced by a scientific spirit, 
necessarily frees himself from over-selfish tendencies. Natural history, 
on its side, by reason of the perfection of its method, its nomenclature 
and its minute observations, has something technical and dry about it, 
which contrasts with the grandeur of nature and with the sentiment of 
art. It is for horticulture, combining as it does the planning and the 
decorations of gardens, to develop the esthetic faculties of the savant, 
as of the world in general. A lovely flower, beautiful trees, a splendid 
floral exhibition, excite a sort of admiration, and even enthusiasm, 
similar to the effects produced by music or painting. 
. The powers of the German composers of modern days, and those of 
the Italian painters of the sixteenth century, are justly extolled ; but 
may it not also be said, that in point of art they are equalled in their 
they we olera, à to the scientific ee as when we say Brassica 
era, instead of, shostis, Colz 
Gardens due example of what should be done, 
either on s large or a more modest scale, in many towns where the means of 
study are yet inconvenient-or incompleto. 
