618 FOREST CULTURE AND 
the best flax crops can be obtained, what varieties of 
cotton can yet be cultivated to advantage in our soils 
and in our latitudes, cotton culture in North America 
terminating with the thirty-eighth degree, north. In 
short, there ought to be, in a scientific garden, repre- 
sentative plants of any important fiber hitherto drawn 
into industrial use. So it should be with important 
starch - plants, dye - plants, oil- plants, fodder - plants ; 
so it should be with any species adopted in medicine. 
Yemember, only, the pretty Lupin plants, of which 
about one hundred different species are known; how 
decorative are they all, how valuable, and so recog- 
nized since antiquity as fodder- herbs and for green 
manure ; how little comparison has also yet been in- 
stituted between the value of their species of the An- 
des, of British Columbia, of the Mediterranean regions 
or California. There are various kinds of Arrowroot- 
plants, different in their degree of hardiness; there 
are oil- plants, which ripen a crop in three months, 
such as the Ramtil or Guizotia. All these deserve 
to be tested, and to be kept prominently before the 
eyes of our colonists. 
Manures in their varied constitution and application 
require also experimental tests. Diseases of plants, 
in their increasing multiplicity, need to be carefully 
traced and elucidated, for which purpose the means 
of a well-sustained botanic garden ought to be availa- 
ble with legitimacy. Be itso far enough. But there | 
is also something inexpressibly charming and recrea- 
tively instructive in viewing a very large assemblage 
of plants from all the different parts of the globe, scien- 
tifically traced to their names and origin. 
But while devoting our energics and resources to 
