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1. Vegetable Physiology.—A knowledge of vegetable physi- 
ology, or of the healthy life and growth of plants, is of prime 
importance to the fruit and vegetable grower. How the roots and 
leaves take in their nourishment, the one from the soil and the 
other from the air; how healthy root and leaf action is best 
promoted ; what substances are taken in from the soil and air 
respectively, and how the resulting sap is best conveyed to its 
destination, when and where it is most wanted ; how the flowers 
are fertilized and fruit produced, so that where nature fails science 
may step in and often prevent the barrenness of the flower; the 
principle of the different modes of propagation; the effects of 
stock on scion; the theory of pruning; the conditions of 
germination, and the duration of the vitality of seeds—these are 
a few of the questions to which vegetable physiology supplies an 
answer, and the proper understanding of which enables the 
grower to insure and promote a healthy and vigorous growth, and 
the attention to which may often mean all the difference between 
a luxuriant healthy crop and a miserably poor one. 
Hybridizing, as well as cross-fertilizing and selection, are also 
very important from a horticultural point of view, and may result 
n the production of improved varieties. 
The anatomy or structure of plants will also be studied, but 
only in connexion with their physiology or function, for the use 
of a part is the main thing for us to learn, and the structure 
explains the action. We must not treat plants, as is too often 
done, as mere bits of mechanism, but as living and growing and 
reproducing organisms, endowed with vital activity. 
It will be necessary for the proper understanding of plant-life 
that a certain amount of chemical knowledge be imparted, such 
as the composition of the air, the water, and the soil, and various 
vegetable products. Inthe meantime this will be given in con- 
nexion with the lectures on botany, and as far as practicable by 
means of illustrative experiments. But chemistry is such a 
fundamental study, treating of the constitution of ‘matter, and so 
necessary for an intelligible explanation of various phenomena, 
that its introduction into the curriculum of study as a special 
subject can only be a matter of time. 
2. Systematic Botany.—A knowledge of the classification of 
plants is also exceedingly useful in enabling us to recognise 
plants naturally related, and thus probably having many proper- 
ties in common. This is well seen in the process of grafting, 
where plants of the same family only unite and grow, and in the 
production of hybrids, which are the result of crossing one 
species with another. Hence the utility of being familiar with 
the affinities of plants and their arrangement into natural groups. 
In dealing with weeds, for instance, which, for our present pur- 
pose may be regarded as plants out of place, it is important to 
