126 FOREST CULTURE AND 
A thousand of other industrial purposes might yet 
be served by a close knowledge of plants. So the 
designer might choose patterns far more beautiful 
from the simple and ever-perfect beauty of nature than 
he gains from distorted forms copied into much of our 
tapestry ; thus a room, now-a-days, as a rule, decorat- 
ed with unmeaning and often, as far as imitation of 
nature is concerned, impossible figures, might become, 
geographically or phytographically, quite instructive. 
If here the founders of territorial estates—some, per- 
haps, as large as the palatinates of the Middle Ages— 
should wish to perpetuate the custom of choosing a 
symbol for family arms, they—asthe Highland clans, 
who adopted special plants of their native mountains 
for a distinguishing badge—might select, as the an- 
cestral emblem, the flowers of our soil, destined, per- 
haps, to be traced, not without pride, by many a 
lineage through a hundred generations. 
Precise knowledge of even the oceanic vegetation, 
in its almost infinite display of forms, offers not mere- 
ly the most delicate objects for design, but brings be- 
fore us its respective value for manure, or the impor- 
tance of various herbage on which fishes will browse ; 
while such marine weeds may as well be transferred 
from ocean to ocean, as ova of trout have been brought 
from the far north to these distant southern latitudes. 
Who could foresee when first iodine was accidentally 
discovered in sea - weeds, through soda factories, or 
bromine subsequently appeared as a mere substance 
of curiosity, what powerful therapeutic agents there- 
by were gained for medicine, what unique results they 
would render for chemical processes, of what incalcu- 
lable advantages they would prove in physiological 
