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Report on Botany. 



187 



a decidedly practical turn to the minds of plant lovers, and 

 although they are issued as a mere matter of business, they 

 can not fail to have some influence in arousing, cultivating 

 and refining a taste for floriculture and for the practical 

 application of botanical principles, and they almost neces- 

 sarily awaken a more common desire for an increase of 

 botanical knowledge. Indeed, the numerous inquiries con- 

 cerning the habits, properties, geographical distribution, 

 proper treatment and scientific names of plants that so often 

 meet our eyes in glancing over the columns of our justly 

 popular agricultural journals, are an indication that the 

 public mind is already desirous of information upon many 

 subjects that properly belong to the science of Botany. 

 "Who shall answer all these inquiries? Where are the 

 patient investigators and the accurate observers who shall 

 work out for us the many yet unsolved problems in vege- 

 table physiology and vegetable economy ? Who shall 

 discover, select and make known to us all those products of 

 the vegetable world that are most available in the arts or 

 for the purposes of food, medicine, shelter, and protection ? 

 There is no lack of men who are ready and willing to imperil 

 health and life if need be, in order to discover and describe 

 a few new species of plants, men who cheerfully leave 

 home and friends and traverse distant unexplored regions, 

 penetrate miasmatic marshes, ascend steep and rugged 

 mountains, brave the dangers of the ocean and dare the 

 heat of the tropics for the sake of adding new species to 

 the list of known plants. There are others who are willing 

 to devote their time to the accumulation and collation of 

 a vast array of facts and statistics concerning the numbers 

 and the distribution of species in different parts of the world. 

 All this is well enough, indeed it is really necessary to a 

 full understanding of the science. We have nothing to say 

 against the one class of laborers nor the other ? We bid 

 them both God-speed in their good work. But we, at the 



