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form, the functions, the classification and the distribution of those 

 organisms that are called plants. Along what lines this study is 

 prosecuted, how it is related to other fields of intellectual activity, 

 and some specific instances of its problems and the manner in 

 which they may be solved is what I shall attempt to tell you. 



It would be out of place in a talk like this to devote too much 

 time to a consideration of the historical side of the subject, and 

 therefore only a few of the important movements can be pointed 

 out. Any folk which had so far emerged from the stage of 

 savagery as to stop to notice the world about it would perforce 

 pay some attention to plants. A discrimination of the medicinal 

 uses of plants is often noticeable even in primitive peoples, and 

 with such observation goes also the discrimination of difference 

 in form, the prototype of morphological research. I have seen 

 a Malay coolie who could distinguish seven forms of tropical 

 oaks where the botanist recognizes only four, an evidence that 

 sharp observation is not confined to the highly developed races. 



In our own civilization, we can trace back the history of botany 

 to Aristotle, who affords us some record of the plant forms known 

 at his time, though the influence which his philosophy wielded, 

 even down to the middle of the last century, was of vastly greater 

 importance than any contribution which he made to botany itself 

 Theophrastus gave a fuller account of plants, and later came the 

 inquiring and ever curious Pliny. Dioscorides, however, in the 

 first or second century of our era, was one of the first to investi- 

 gate plants with any attempt at thoroughness even from the 

 standpoint of the knowledge of the time. As is shown especially 

 by Dioscorides' work, the study of plants was largely from their 

 use as drugs, and they were described simply to facilitate their 

 recognition. Any real knowledge of them was naturally meager, 

 and false ideas that clung for a long time, some until compar- 

 atively recently, prevented any proper conception of form and 

 function. 



As would be expected the contributions become of less and 

 less value as we approach the middle ages, the botanical writings 

 of which time were full of the wildest fantasy and superstition. 

 The efforts of this period need not arrest our attention. 



