612 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1035 



yields from improved plants and through 

 better tillage. It is difficult to anticipate 

 the problems that will confront us when 

 people swarm on the land, as now in India 

 or China, but I venture the prediction that 

 if in that day "the evil arrows of famine" 

 are sent upon us, a fourth means of sup- 

 plying food will be found quite as impor- 

 tant as the three named. 



We shall find, long before famine over- 

 takes us, that the natural capacity of soils 

 and climates to produce a diversity of crops 

 is one of the greatest resources for an in- 

 creased food supply. As yet, multiplicity 

 of crops as a means of augmenting the sup- 

 ply of food has received little attention 

 and I want to bring you to a better reali- 

 zation of its possibilities in the half hour 

 at my disposal, attempting to show, in par- 

 ticular, how greatly the necessities and 

 luxuries of life can be increased by the 

 domestication of wild esculents; by better 

 distribution of little-known food plants; 

 and by the amelioration of crops we now 

 grow through breeding them with wild or 

 little-known relatives. 



Few, even among those who have given 

 special attention to agricultural crops, 

 have a proper conception of the number 

 that might be grown. De CandoUe, one of 

 the few men of science who have made a 

 systematic study of domesticated plants, 

 and whose "Origin of Cultivated Plants" 

 has long been sanctioned by science as au- 

 thoritative, is much to blame for the cur- 

 rent misconception as to the number of 

 plants under cultivation. By conveying 

 the idea that his book covers the whole 

 field, De Candolle prepared the ground for 

 a fine crop of misunderstandings. 



Humboldt had stated in 1807 that 



The origin, the first home of the plants most 

 useful to man, and which have accompanied him 

 from the remotest epochs, is a secret as impen- 

 etrable as the dwelling of all our domesticated 

 animals. 



De Candolle set out to disprove Hum- 

 boldt. He assorted cultivated plants in 247 

 species and ascertained very accurately 

 the histories of 244 out of the total niun- 

 ber. De Candolle 's thoroughness, patience, 

 judgment, affluence of knowledge, clear 

 logic and felicity of expression, make his 

 book so trustworthy and valuable in most 

 particulars, that we have accepted it as the 

 final word in all particulars, overlooking 

 his faulty enumeration and forgetting that 

 most of his material was gathered more 

 than a half century ago. 



My first task is to establish the fact that 

 the number of plants now cultivated for 

 food the world over is not appreciated in 

 either science or practise. Neither are bot- 

 anists nor agriculturists seemingly well 

 aware of the number of edible plants not 

 domesticated which are in times of stress 

 used in various parts of the world for 

 food, many of which can well be grown for 

 food. Tour attention must be called to the 

 number of these. 



Inspiration for this discussion of the un- 

 developed food resources of the plant-king- 

 dom came to the speaker from the use of 

 notes left at the New York Agricultural 

 Experiment Station by the first director of 

 the station, the late Dr. B. Lewis Sturte- 

 vant, who gave most of his life to the study 

 of economic botany. His pen contribu- 

 tions on cultivated plants in agricultural 

 and botanical magazines cover thirty years 

 and number many titles. In addition, the 

 unpublished material just mentioned, 

 under the heading "Edible Plants of the 

 World" takes up over 1,600 typewritten 

 pages. During his life. Dr. Sturtevant was 

 in the full tide of American science, but I 

 am sure could he have lived to publish the 

 great treatise which he had planned on 

 edible plants, and upon which he worked 

 for twenty years, we should give him 

 much higher rank with giants of science, 



