DEVELOPMENT OF BOTANY SINCE 1818 443 



There are interesting notes on the sugar-beet as a source 

 of sugar, and here appears one of the earliest accounts of 

 the Assam tea-plant, which was destined to revolutionize 

 the tea industry throughout the world. Cordage and tex- 

 tile fibers of bark and of wood should be utilized in the 

 manufacture of paper. In fact one comes upon many 

 such surprises in economic botany as the earlier volumes 

 of the Journal are carefully examined. 



Early numbers of the Journal present with suffi- 

 cient fulness accounts of the remarkable discovery by 

 Daguerre and others of a process for taking pictures by 

 light, on a silver plate or upon paper (37, 374, 1839; 38, 

 97, 1840, etc.). Before many years passed, the Journal 

 had occasion to show that these novel photographic 

 delineations could be made useful in the investigation of 

 problems in botany. In the pages of the Journal it would 

 be easily possible to trace the development of this art in 

 its relations to natural history. Silliman possessed 

 great sagacity in selecting for his enterprise all the nov- 

 elties which promised to be of service in the advancement 

 of science. In 1825 (9, 263) the Journal republished 

 from the Edinburgh Journal of Science an essay by Dr. 

 (afterwards Sir) William Jackson Hooker, on American 

 Botany. In this essay the author states that "the 

 various scientific Journals" which "are published in 

 America, contain many memoirs upon the indigenous 

 plants. Among the first of these in point of value, and 

 we think also the first with regard to time, we must name 

 Silliman 's Journal of Science." The author enumerates 

 some of the contributors to the Journal and the titles of 

 their papers. 



It has been a useful practice of the Journal, almost 

 from the first, to transfer to its pages memoirs which 

 would otherwise be likely to escape the notice of the 

 majority of American botanists. The book notices and 

 the longer book reviews covered so wide a field that they 

 placed the readers of the Journal in touch with nearly all 

 of the current botanical literature both here and abroad. 

 These critical notices did much towards the symmetrical 

 development of botany in the United States. And as we 

 shall now see, the Journal notices and reviews in the 



