18 THE USES OF PLANTS. 



mercantile marine of this great kingdom. They 

 furnish us with the bulk of our food and clothing, 

 our medicine and our building materials, and with 

 many other necessaries and luxuries. It may be 

 argued that most of the benefits we derive from the 

 vegetable kingdom have been discovered without the 

 aid of science. True, but is not this a great and 

 powerful argument in favour of the application of 

 scientific investigation in this department? For, if 

 so much has been done without its aid, how much 

 may we not hope will be effected when the principles 

 of scientific research, which have effected such miracles 

 in every other department, are brought to bear upon 

 that of Economic Botany ?' 



Since this was written, much has in fact been done. 

 Government botanists in our various colonies, our 

 consular agents and many manufacturing firms and 

 skilled specialists at home, always ably and willingly 

 assisted by the officials at Kew, have carried out 

 thorough, if not always systematic, investigations into 

 the possible utilisation of what are at present waste or 

 undeveloped substances. The literature of Vegetable 

 Technology has accordingly become so extensive as 

 to have had a valuable bibliographical work (Mr. 

 B. D. Jackson's * Vegetable Technology,' Index 

 Society, London, 1882) devoted to it exclusively. 



It is unnecessary to enumerate here in extenso the 

 many hundred works to which reference has been 

 made in the preparation of this manual. Acknow- 

 ledgment must, however, be made of the writer's 

 great indebtedness to the following books of a more 

 general character : 



