There is not a plant that grows that has not its 

 use for man, if he can discover it, and it is to such 

 discoverers in the past that we owe largely our pres- 

 ent civilization and the benefits it confers. We are 

 indebted to the monks of the middle ages for the 

 preservation not only, but also for the knowledge of 

 the uses of many of the important plants upon 

 which we now depend for food and for other pur- 

 poses. Attached to each monastery was a farm, and 

 generally a large one, in which all, from the abbot 

 downward, performed the manual labor requisite for 

 its cultivation, by which the monks maintained their 

 bodies in health, and produced, not only what was 

 necessary for their own support, but what enabled 

 them from their abundance to be liberal to the poor. 

 I speak of the orders then largely distributed over 

 Europe that connected land cultivation with the 

 religious life, such as the Cistercians, Carthusians 

 and others, to whom, not only their own age, but 

 posterity, is deeply indebted. They generally estab 

 lished their monasteries in desert and barren places, 

 which they made productive by their physical labor 

 and their intelligence. Loudon, in his work on botany, 

 says that without the labor of these fanner-monks, 

 many provinces of Europe which at present nourish 

 thousands of inhabitants would have remained 

 deserts and marshes, the resorts only of wild beasts 

 and the scources of disease, and that gardening as 

 one of the arts of design, instead of being, as it is now, 

 generally diffused, would have been lost to the 



