July, 1921] BALL — ^ RELATION OF BOTANY TO HUMAN WELFARE 325 
Throughout the seventeenth century, botanical knowledge was growing 
rapidly along taxonomic lines. Master minds were laboring to formulate 
orderly classifications of both wild and domesticated plants. The later and 
more logical of these attempts are typified in the writings of Tournefort and 
the elder Jussieu and reached their climax in the eighteenth century in the 
classic works of Linne, in 1737 and 1753, and in those of the contemporaneous 
Jussieu the younger. By these and succeeding systematists of the eigh- 
teenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, the leading 
species and subspecies of important cultivated plants were included and 
given specific rank as readily as if native and wild. 
The writer does not believe that the feral and cultivated species should 
have received identical treatment, for differences in morphological characters 
sufficient to separate species of wild plants are sufficient only to separate 
agronomic or horticultural varieties of crop plants. The point to be em- 
phasized is that the cultivated plants were felt to be worthy the attention 
of the greatest botanists of all those centuries. 
Before the middle of the nineteenth century, a change of attitude had be- 
come fully evident. Discussion of crop plants was eliminated from manuals 
of botany. This change of attitude probably was due to several different 
reasons. The first, doubtless, was a realization of the difliculties of classi- 
fying cultivated crops on the same basis as wild plants. The second was 
the marvelous improvement in methods of transportation and communi- 
cation, through the development of railroads and postal facilities. These 
made possible the botanical exploration of the hinterlands and distributed 
the resulting collections to botanists everywhere for study, thus diverting 
attention from domesticated plants. The third and perhaps controlling 
reason was a growing feeling that useful plants were of a class apart, botani- 
cally unclean, and unworthy the best thought of the systematist and physi- 
ologist. The result was that, while a few botanists devoted themselves 
almost exclusively to studies of crop plants, the great majority shunned 
them entirely. That such a situation should have developed at all was most 
unfortunate, but that it should have come about just in that period of time 
was particularly deplorable. 
The present era of widespread appreciation and subsidization of the 
biological sciences was about to be ushered in. The act establishing the 
system of land-grant colleges was in process of formation. The founding 
of the state agricultural experiment stations was only 30 or 40 years ahead. 
The increased appropriations for research in nation and states were to 
follow soon after. The amazing endowment of great universities was on 
the horizon. The organization of such great scientific bodies as those in 
session here was about to become an accomplished fact. 
One can almost imagine that the scientific sky must have been aglow with 
the coming dawn." In spite of this, Botany drew apart and proclaimed 
herself too sacred to be polluted by the useful. The pursuit of truth for 
