704 [Assembly 



September 7, 1847. 



The lion. Nathan BucharJ, of the Assembly of this State, in the 

 Chair. 



HENRY MEIGS, Secretary. 



Mr. Meigs read the following translation by him, relative to the 

 science of Botany. 



Annales de la Societe Royale D^Horticole, Paris, Jan. 1847. 



XVIITH LECTURE OF MONS. POITEAU COURSE OF HORTICULTURE. 



Extracts translated by H. Meigs, Secretary of the Farmers' Club of the American Institute. 



It is now a long time since able botanists have felt that the des- 

 cription, character and classification of plants, was rather a sterile 

 science, and that in order to render it useful and truly interesting, we 

 must add the application of vegetables to the uses of man. Linneeus 

 was careful to note the uses of plants in domestic economy and the 

 arts. It is now about one hundred years since he restored botany 

 from the chaos in which his predecessors had involved it, and made of 

 it a lovely, attractive, and seducing science, based upon rules easily 

 understood. Now, with the exception of some immutable laws laid 

 down by the immortal Jussieu, what passes to day for a truth, may 

 to morrow pass for an error. 



The study of botany is no longer a pleasure, an agreeable relaxa- 

 tion, but a painful task for those who wish to keep up with the cur- 

 rent of innovations, true, false, serious, or futile, which are daily 

 introduced into it, under the titles of perfection, &c. The masters 

 of botany themselves cannot come to an understanding. For many 

 years past, two of the most celebrated have maintained an obstinate 

 combat in the bosom of the Academy of Sciences itself ; and it seems 

 very probable that this combat will never cease, until the death of 

 one of the combatants. 



Before the invention of the microscope, all botanists lived in peace; 

 each one saw as well and as far as his neighbor; plants grew, 

 yielded their fruit; crops ripened as well as they do in our day. The 

 microscope came! behold, a war is lighted up! Yet the microscope 

 is a precious little instrument; it has discovered many curious things 

 useful to the advancement of human knowledge; it shows small bo- 

 dies two thousand times larger than they are in reality, but still sur- 

 rounded with fog, so that each observer very often sees differently 



