BOTANY, Si 



BOTANY. 

 By Edward White. 



[Read March 25, 1919 ; Sir Albert K. Rollit, LL.D., in the Chair.] 



Most people are willing to pay lip service to botany as an interesting 

 subject, but the true relation which the science bears to the daily 

 life of man is appreciated by comparatively few. We are a practical 

 people, and there is a popular impression that botany is a science 

 of small practical importance, offering as its best reward the dis- 

 covery of obscure plants in field, hedge, or woodland. Even many, 

 who know that botany represents the scientific foundation upon 

 which this Society stands, imagine that its chief aims are the classi- 

 fication of plants and the production of new forms of beauty in 

 flower and foliage. Most dealers in every-day commodities would 

 smile at the suggestion that botany could be employed in any way 

 to influence their business to advantage. 



A wider conception of botany was suggested when I was asked 

 by a company, interested in the exploitation of a large tropical area, 

 to introduce a man of first-class ability and expert in economic 

 botany — i.e. he was required to identify plants of proved commercial 

 value, to estimate the possibilities of new discoveries, to act as 

 physician to cultivated crops, and also as botanical consultant in 

 all matters connected with agriculture, horticulture, and forestry. 



The appointment had interesting possibilities, and I was sorry 

 I could not find among my friends anyone qualified to fill it. The 

 manager of the company said he expected they would have to 

 get hold of someone, whom he vaguely called a " foreigner," after 

 the War. 



Shortly afterwards, I was asking about the work of a certain 

 boy, and I was told that he alone in a school of 400 pupils was taking 

 up the subject of botany. I should have been less surprised if I 

 had known then how very little the study of botany was practised 

 at public schools generally. Plenty of first-class reasons can doubt- 

 less be given for the omission, but there seems to be a certain con- 

 nexion between this fact and the difficulty of finding a man for the 

 appointment referred to. This view is supported by the prospectus 

 of the University College in one of the most important business 

 towns of England, which I saw by chance only this week. Among 

 about twenty-five subjects of science and art, for the study of 

 which provision was advertised, botany was conspicuously absent. 



You may notice, moreover, that, as reported in the public speeches 

 of authorities concerned with the promotion of science, the word 

 botany is very rarely mentioned. 



VOL. XLV. G 



