86 FOREST CULTURE AND 
of this institution, we might learn by a rapid glance 
over an area of knowledge singularly wide that only 
through many successive discourses, explaining sub- 
jects in detail, the student can become aware of the 
importance of phytologic knowledge in its relation to 
the industrial purposes of life. In all zones, except 
the most icy, mankind depends on plants for its prin- 
cipal wants. For our sustenance, clothing, dwellings, 
or utensils ; for our means of transit, whether by sea 
or land; indeed, for all our ordinary daily require- 
ments, we have to draw the material largely, and 
often solely, from the vegetable world. The resources 
for all these necessities must be —it cannot be other- 
wise—manifold in the extreme, and singularly varied, 
again, in different climatic zones, or under otherwise 
modified conditions. 
To render, therefore, these vegetable treasures 
accessible to our fullest benefit, not only locally, bat 
universally, must ever be an object of the deepest sig- 
nificance. Increasing requirements of the human 
races and augmented insight into the gifts of nature 
render now-a-days quite imperative the closest appli- 
ances of science to our resources and our daily wants. 
‘¢ Omnis tellus optima ferat !’’ has become the motto 
of our Acclimatization Society ; or let me quote from 
Virgil: ‘* Non omnis fert omnia tellus, hic segetes, illic 
veniunt felicius uvae.”? Striving to unite the products 
of many lands, it suffices for us nowhere any longer 
to discriminate among these resources with merely 
crude notions; but it becomes necessary to fix accu- 
rately, also, as far as plants are concerned, their indus- 
trial value, trace their origin, test their adaptability, 
investigate their productiveness, durability, qualities; 
