A GARDENER'S VIEW OF SCIENCE OLD AND NEW. 173 



A GARDENER'S VIEW OF SCI- 

 ENCE OLD AND NEW. 

 Under the above heading there is a 

 quaint and suggestive article in The 

 Monthly Review by Professor Patrick 

 Geddes, bringing to mind in an interest- 

 ing way the knowledge of older peoples 

 and deprecating the tendencyof our own 

 time to think that " science" as regards 

 our own work dates from modern times 

 only. Such thoughts are timely, consi- 

 dering the modern tendency of writers 

 to assume that that is only science which 

 comes into their own little technique: 



"There are text-books of science 

 which ascribe the discovery of the sexes 

 of plants to this modern botanist or to 

 that. In the popular mind this is mostly 

 associated with Linnaeus; while some of 1 

 our botanical historians gravely vindi- 

 cate the claim of a certain Sir Thomas 

 Millington, of Oxford, in the century 

 before. But the whole desert East has 

 been living upon dates from time imme- 

 morial. How did it annually fertilise its 

 date-trees if the sexes of plants were not 

 as familiar as now ? And what pilgrim 

 or crusader did not learn this ? " 



' £ Proud of our modern physics, our 

 modern microscopy and the rest, we 

 tend to think there was practically no 

 ancient science at all; and even histo- 

 rians too often speak as if science almost 

 begins with the nineteenth century, or, 

 at any rate, with the Renaissance. But 

 we do not speak thus contemptuously 

 of the philosophies of the ancient past. 

 In Plato, in Aristotle, all men recognise 

 the very cul minations of grasp and range 

 of thought, of comprehensiveness and 

 subtlety, of truth and beauty." 



" Darwin and his followers, in in 

 vestigating the mysterious processes, 

 yet simple methods, of breedingand se- 

 lection, have been but recovering frag- 

 ments of an ancient art; and with art is 

 ever necessarily associated acorrespond- 

 ing measure of science. What is the proof 

 of this ? it may be asked. Do you seri- 

 ously believe, much less expect to main- 

 tain, the idea that prehistoric man knew 

 more about such things than Darwin 

 and Weismann, or than the breeders of 

 to-day ? Precisely so ! This is the point, 

 and one which it only needs a little re- 

 flection to make clear. Within our cen- 

 tury we have actually developed, and 

 are now in every decade and lustrum 

 more often developing, new forms and 

 breeds of beautiful and useful plants, 

 and sometimes also animals, from com- 

 mon and familiar varieties and species. 

 But we have not as yet succeeded, either 

 in our own day or within the historic 

 period, in developing any important 

 new food-plant or any new domesticated 

 animal. That is to say, each and all of 

 these are prehistoric. We are proud, and 

 deservedly so, in our day of our advance 

 in agricultural as in physical science; 

 but what in both of them put together 

 corresponds to the importance of rais- 

 ing our present cereals from wild grasses, 

 our noble fruits, like the apple, olive, 

 and vine, from worthless crabs ? And 

 when we go to the essential plants of 

 other civilisations, to the rice of the 

 East or the potatoes and maize of the 

 West, we find the same origins lost in 

 antiquity. The scholar when he finds 

 written records, the archaeologist when 

 he finds a hoard of noble art workman- 



