INTRODUCTION 



TO START WITH- 



There ought to be a reason why anyone should read this book. 

 Some people have itching brains and will read anything. They are 

 welcome, but in the main we are after more cautious game. To be 

 blunt, we hope to snare those who think plants a fit topic for exer- 

 cising the intelligence, and fit objects for engaging the muscles. 



Thus far, we have as our potential audience the curious citizen, the 

 agriculturist in all his forms, the forester, the home gardener, the 

 feeder of animals both gentle and wild, the sportsman, the nature 

 lover, that considerable body of folk who eat plants on occasion, and 

 in particular, we have the teacher and student of plant life. 



Teachers and students of plant science doubtless think the subject 

 important. It is our thesis that it is more important than even they 

 claim. The demonstration of this proposition is a task on which we 

 descend with considerable enthusiasm. Assuming that we shall be 

 successful, we must conclude that those among our readers who 

 happen to teach or will some day teach may want to pass on to their 

 students the facts, ideas, and proofs here presented. And so, we can- 

 not refrain from making suggestions on how to do it. However, these 

 suggestions will not be imposed upon those remote from the teaching 

 art, but will be buried in that Potter's field of the penman an 

 appendix. 



If we were to assume anything about our audience, it would be 

 that it has some knowledge of plants that it knows an oak from a 

 pine. However, we are not going to assume anything in this connec- 

 tion except that it is interested in plants or is willing to become in- 

 terested. In fact, little will be said about individual plants. We shall 

 proceed quickly to a consideration of plants in the mass. 



It is in the mass that plants affect man most strikingly. It is the 

 pasture, the meadow, the range which eventually put the beefsteak 

 on the platter or the rabbit in the game bag. It is the grove, the 

 woodlot, the forest which put the newspaper on the front porch, the 

 vension on the peg. It is when we do not have plants in the mass that 

 trouble starts for man. 



AND SO, NATURALLY- 



In the chapters which follow we shall discuss many of the troubles 

 of man. We shall see how he has brought them upon himself, and 

 how he can throw them off by using plants en masse. In diagnosing 

 and prescribing for these troubles we must, like the physician, inquire 

 into what may seem unrelated conditions, but which turn out to be 

 fundamentally inseparable. In nature we find wheels within wheels; 

 and, as in a watch, a flaw in one immediately disrupts the proper 

 functioning of the whole instrument. Each wheel is important and 

 worthy of attention, but to the user it is the function of the whole 

 that counts most. It is comparatively simple to become an expert 



xi 



