state; pomological society. 79 



PLEASURE AND PROFIT FROM PLANT STUDY. 

 By Prof. A. L. Lane, Waterville. 



The profit to be derived from plant study is at once apparent 

 from the simple fact that all our food comes from plant life. 

 Directly or indirectly, at first hand or at second hand, all animals, 

 and man among them, receive their entire sustenance from vegeta- 

 ble growth or through the mediation of plant activity. We take 

 our daily bread at the hands of practical botanists. 



It would be absolutely impossible for the seventy millions of 

 our population to find food for themselves, still less to have sur- 

 plus for exportation, but for the fact that men have made careful 

 study of the various food plants, their propagation, cultivation, 

 improvement, multiplication and transportation. Contrast our 

 present abundance with the precarious existence of the Indian 

 tribes that roamed over this country and secured scanty susten- 

 ance by hunting and fishing and to a slight extent by the culti- 

 vation of Indian corn. If he is a benefactor of the race who 

 makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before, still 

 more is he who introduces improved kinds of grain or better 

 methods of cultivating and utilizing those already known. Plant 

 study is directly contributing and absolutely necessary to this 

 result. The practical, working knowledge of food plants, of 

 grains and fruits, already obtained, gives us a wealth of 

 resource lying at the foundation of national prosperity and there 

 is still abundant room for study and improvement. It seems to 

 be a law of nature that only the plant can feed directly upon 

 inorganic matter, upon matter that has never been alive; and 

 thus the higher, more intelligent life of animal and of man could 

 not exist without the intervention of the lower and less sensitive 

 life. Even the birds and other animals share with us in the fruits 

 of this study and gather their food with us often from the fruits 

 of our own labor. In the higher forms, plant and animal are 

 separated by a wide gulf ; there is great diflference between a man 

 and an elm tree, for example ; but in the lower forms consisting 

 of single cells and studied only with the compound microscope, 

 it is harder to draw the line, and when we come to separate such 

 a plant as a diatom from such an animal as the amoeba the task 



