THE RELATIONS OF BOTANY TO AGRICULTURE. 



BY WILLIAM S. CLARK. 



Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen : There is much 

 reason for gratitude and encouragement in the fact that the 

 general subject of agricultural education need no longer be 

 discussed at the meetings of this Board. That good mental 

 training, some literary culture and familiarity with the laws 

 and phenomena of nature are useful to the farmer, is no longer 

 denied. That chemistry, by revealing the composition of air, 

 water, soils and manures, as well as of plants and animals, 

 has rendered a rational system of agriculture possible, is uni- 

 versally admitted. The chemical force, however, exerts its 

 influence principally upon dead matter, and is subordinate to 

 that other greater mystery which organizes mineral substances 

 into those varied forms of vegetation which clothe the earth 

 with beauty and furnish the indispensable food of animals. 



Baron von Liebig has said : w The scientific basis of agricul- 

 ture embraces a knowledge of all the conditions of vegetable 

 life, of the origin of the elements of plants, and of the source 

 from which they derive their nourishment." Professor Lind- 

 ley also asserts that "good agriculture and horticulture are 

 founded upon the laws of vegetable physiology ; " and that 

 " no man deserves the name of gardener who is not master of 

 everything known as to the way in which plants feed, breathe, 

 grow, digest, and have their being." How astonishing and 

 humiliating then to every enlightened American must be the 

 fact that while in Europe almost every university and every 

 large city has its botanic garden for the instruction and enter- 

 tainment of students and people, there is not in these United 

 States a single general collection of living plants, systemati- 

 cally arranged and adapted to convey any adequate idea of the 

 wonders of the vegetable kingdom. It seems, therefore, not 



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