THE LIVING PLANT 



CHAPTER I 



THE VARIOUS WAYS IN WHICH PLANTS APPEAL TO THE 

 INTERESTS AND MIND OF MAN 



Methods of Study in the Science of Botany 



ND he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in 

 Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of 

 the wall." Thus runs the record of the first botanical 

 teacher, reputed also the wisest of men, as writ in the 

 greatest of books. And from the days of King Solomon down 

 to our own, men never have ceased to speak and learn of plants, 

 until now the circle of knowledge has long been too vast for any 

 one mind to encompass. To us, plants embrace not alone the 

 cedar and the hyssop, but the fern, the moss, the lichen, the sea- 

 weed, the mushroom, the mold, the blight, the yeast, and the 

 germ of disease within the body of man. And it is not alone their 

 forms, their uses, and their habits which concern us, but as well 

 the minutest details of their internal construction: the mean- 

 ings of their resemblances and their differences : the ways of their 

 nutrition, increase, and adjustment to their surroundings: the 

 possibilities of their development to greater and yet undiscovered 

 utilities: and in truth no less than every fact which the intellect 

 of man can discover about them. 



The field of botanical study is therefore not simply vast, it is 

 practically limitless, in this respect transcending the natural 

 powers of man, which are small. Therefore, while every school- 



