OUTLINES OF A COURSE OF FOUR LECTURES 



ON SOME RELATIONS OF 



Botany to Horticulture 



Delivered by Prof. George L. Goo dale., of the University at 

 Cambridge, before the Worcester County Horticul- 

 tural Society, A. D., 1879. 



It is the task of Botany to answer every question which we 

 can ask respecting plants. Horticulture deals with the very 

 practical matters of originating, improving, and perpetuating 

 garden plants. Therefore the questions which belong to gar- 

 dening belong also to a department of applied Botany, and for 

 a rational solution of the problems in Horticulture, we must 

 look to the principles of Scientific Botany. The structure, 

 food, growth, reproduction and diseases of plants occupy a 

 wide field of research, from which the horticulturist, if he would 

 be successful, must select rules for his guidance. For the 

 purpose of these lectures the field can be merely glanced at, 

 and not carefully surveyed ; all that can be done is to ascertain 

 accurately a few of the more important points, and learn their 

 relations to minor details. 



The first groups of topics relate to the seed, its germination, 

 and the development of the plant up to the period of its flower- 

 ing. The second will treat of the production of seed, and the 



