14 
flower garden for pleasure and not for profit. Thus, in connexion 
with my lectures on the “Principles of Agriculture,” at the 
Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh, I secured the services for 
occasional lectures of such men as the Curator of the Royal 
Botanic Gardens there, who gave us, I remember, a thoroughly 
practical lecture on “ Plants Suitable for Room Decoration.” 
Borany IN RELATION TO HORTICULTURE. 
Coming now to the special subject on which I proposed to 
speak, and that with which I have to deal in the course of 
lectures here, viz.:—Botany in its relation to horticulture. This 
relation is a very intimate one, and the place botany will hold in 
the course of instruction here will be to enable students to under- 
stand the why and the wherefore of the various operations they 
perform. 
We sometimes speak of the science of horticulture as dealing 
mainly with the variation of plants under cultivation and selection, 
but botany will be regarded by us as the science, and horticulture 
as the art, which is just botany applied and practised in the 
orchard and garden. It is not intended to turn out botanists 
here, but practical horticulturists, and so the subject will always 
be treated with that end in view, as a means to an end. The 
subject of botany in its bearing upon horticulture is a very wide 
one, and would require much more time than can be devoted to it 
now in order to do full justice to it, so I will just confine myself, 
in the first place, to the consideration of the value of botany as a 
means of general training ; then, in the next place, its utility to 
those who intend to cultivate the soil, and to reap the fruits of 
the earth with the best possible results. 
VALUE oF Borany as A TRAINING. 
The general advantages of studying botany may be briefly 
stated as a training in accurate observation, methodical description, 
and classification. 
To observe accurately seems a very simple matter, and yet how 
few there are who can be implicitly trusted in their observations. 
The eye sees what it brings with it the power of seeing, and 
this power has to be developed and trained. I know of no science 
which can surpass that of botany in this matter of accurate and 
exact observation. In describing a plant or part of a plant—it 
may be a leaf, a flower, or a seed—you are expected so to picture 
it in words, so to present it to the mind of another, that he or she 
from that word-picture could make an accurate drawing of the 
object. 
This power of accurate, exact, and careful observation is a 
valuable one, and well worth the trouble of acquiring, not only 
in the business of horticulture, but in the ordinary affairs of life. 
