TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K. 833 



attention, and aroused popular interest at the same time. In addition to their 

 importance from more academical points of view — for they claim, the attention of 

 morphologist and physiologist as much as any group, as the work of Wager, 

 Massee, Trow, Hartog, and Harper, and an army of Continental investigators, with 

 Brefeld, Von Tavel, Magnus, &c., at their head, has shown — the Fungi appeal to 

 wider interests on many grounds, but especially on that of utility. The fact that 

 Fungi affect our lives directly has been driven home, and whether as poisons or 

 foods, destructive moulds or fermentation-agents, parasitic mildews or disease 

 germs, they occupy more of public interest than all other Cryptogams together, 

 the flowering plants alone rivalling them in this respect. 



A marked feature of the period we live in will be the great advances made in 

 our knowledge of the uses of plants. Of course, this development of Economic 

 Botany has gone hand in hand with the progress of Geographical Botany and the 

 extension of our planting and other interests in the colonies, but the useful applica- 

 tions of Botany to the processes of home industries are increasing also. 



The information acquired by travellers exploring new countries, by orchid- 

 collectors, prospectors for new fibres or india-rubber, or resulting from the experi- 

 ences of planters, foresters, and observant people, living abroad, has a value in money 

 which does not here concern us ; but it has also a value to science, for the facts 

 collected, the specimens brought home, the processes observed, the results of analyses, 

 the suggestions gathered — in short, the puzzles propounded by these wanderers — all 

 stimulate research, and so have a value not to be expressed in terms of money. 



The two react mutually, and I am convinced that the stimulus of the questions 

 asked by commerce of botanical science has had, and is having, an important 

 ■effect in promoting its advance. The best proof to be given of the converse — 

 that botany is really useful to commerce — is afforded by the ever-increasing 

 demands for answers to the questions of the practical man. At the risk of touch- 

 ing the sensibilities of those who maintain that a university should regard only 

 the purely academical aspects of a science, I propose to discuss some cases where 

 the reciprocal influences of applied, or useful, and purely academic or useless 

 botany — useless because no use has yet been made of it, as some one has wittily 

 put it — have resulted in gain to both. In doing this, I wish to clearly state my 

 conviction that no scientific man should be guided or restricted in his investiga- 

 tions by any considerations whatever as to the commercial or money value of his 

 results : to patent a method of cultivating a bacillus, to keep secret the composi- 

 tion of a nutritive medium, to withhold any evidence, is anti-scientific, for by the 

 nature of the case it is calculated to prevent improvement — i.e. to impede progress. 

 It is not implied that there is anything intrinsically wrong in protecting a dis- 

 covery : all I urge is that it is opposed to the scientific spirit. 



But the fact that a scientific discovery is found to have a commercial value 

 also — for instance, Wehmer's discovery that the mould fungus, Citryomyces, will 

 convert 50 per cent, of the sugar in a saccharine solution to the commercially 

 valuable citric acid ; or Matruchot's success in germinating the spores of the 

 mushroom, and in sending pure cultures of that valuable agaric into the market 

 — is no argument against the scientific value of the research. There are in agri- 

 culture, forestry, and commerce generally, innumerable and important questions 

 for solution, the investigation of which will need all the powers of careful 

 observation, industrious recording, and thoughtful deduction of which a scientific 

 man is capable. But while I emphatically regard these and similar problems as 

 worthy the attention of botanists, and recognise frankly their commercial import- 

 aace, I want to carefully and distinctly warn all my hearers against supposing that 

 their solution should be attempted simply because they have a commercial value. 



It is because they are so full of promise as scientific problems, that I think it 

 no valid argument against their importance to theoretical science that they have 

 been suggested in practice. In all these matters it seems to me we should recog- 

 nise that practical men are doing us a service in setting questions, because they set 

 them definitely. In the attempt to solve these problems we may be sure science 

 will gain, and if commerce gains also, so much the better for commerce, and 

 indirectly for us. But that is not the same thing as directly interesting ourselves 



1897 3 H 



