670 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



farmers' crops and stock. To study these dangers, to devise 

 means to avoid them, to discover cures for those plants which 

 are attacked by disease, are the tasks which the vegetable pathol- 

 ogist has before him. 



Agriculture and horticulture are simply the practical applica- 

 tions of principles denned by the study of vegetable physiology. 

 Questions as to the suitability of certain soils for certain crops 

 are answered by the practical farmer, who scorns the aid which 

 the scientific man might give him, by such expensive experi- 

 ments as sowing the area in question with the seeds of the crop 

 which he hopes to reap. If the crop is a good one, the farmer 

 rejoices ; if he gets but a trifling return for his season's labor, he 

 grumbles at his luck, or wants the Government to order a bounty, 

 or to pass a prohibitory tariff. The market-gardener should 

 know now as the result of the published investigations of vege- 

 table physiologists at agricultural experiment stations, that some 

 of the vegetables and fruits which bring the highest prices when 

 marketed out of season can be brought to perfection much earlier 

 when grown not only in sunlight by day, but under the electric 

 light by night. Lettuce, for example, can be marketed about two 

 weeks sooner after planting if illuminated day and night. 



The horticulturist daily proves by producing various and often 

 striking varieties of flowers or fruits the falsity of the old notions 

 as to the fixity of living organisms. I must confess that it 

 seems to me rather disrespectful, some persons might say rather 

 impious, so to tamper with the natural or " divinely appointed " 

 forms of plants, as to produce the monstrous chrysanthemums 

 which we may see in exhibitions or in private houses. But these 

 exaggerated and often extremely ugly because so artificial forms 

 are the strongest evidences that the organic world, of which we 

 are a part, is extremely plastic still in spite of its age ; and that 

 those factors which have accomplished the evolution of present 

 complexity from primitive simplicity are still operative, and that 

 man as well as other organisms has not yet reached his final and 

 highest development. 



I wish to say one word of that aspect of botanical science 

 which is still but little regarded in our country, but which, if our 

 successors are to have any forests, must receive due and practical 

 notice. I mean the science of forestry. In Germany especially, 

 but in other European countries also, there are forestry schools, 

 where young men receive that scientific and many-sided training 

 which will fit them properly to administer the private and Govern- 

 ment wooded lands. It is an interesting fact that, great as is the 

 expense in maintaining these schools and in managing the forests, 

 yet the forests of Germany are one of the most profitable proper- 

 ties of the Government. The railroads pay a trifling interest still, 



