326 
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
[Vol. 8. 
truth's sake is noble, and consecrated thousands have devoted themselves 
to lives of privation and sacrifice under the inspiration of this ideal. Truth 
for man's sake is no less noble. If in social science, service to others is 
the highest form of altruism, how unreasonable the attitude that, in the 
development of a natural science, no thought for humanity should be allowed 
to enter. 
From our present vantage point of perspective, it seems doubly un- 
fortunate that the botanical fraternity should have lost interest in domesti- 
cated plants just at a period when the development of teaching and re- 
search institutions would have given them the needed laboratory and field 
facilities for really effective study. Farm crops as a subject was not and 
is not taught by botanists. As the writer has pointed out in a previous 
paper, the original farm-crop specialists entered that field through many 
doors, including chemistry, the old-time agriculture, and even animal 
husbandry, as well as botany. On the other hand, when botany did deal 
with any phase of farm crops she called it "applied botany" or ''economic 
botany," and so erected the wall which gradually shut her off from part of 
her own domain. From this illogical and unfortunate separation, both 
botany and agronomy suffer to this day. 
Human Welfare 
Human welfare may be defined as a satisfactory condition or relation 
of human society, individually and in the mass. Such welfare must be both 
material and esthetic. It presumes a coordination of good in the physical, 
mental, an4 spiritual realms. Can the botany of crop plants be shown to 
have any relation to these phases of human welfare? Let us ascertain. 
Upon the products of the vegetable kingdom the human race depends 
for the very essentials of its life. The vital needs of humans are two- 
fold, food and shelter, and these are important in the order named. The 
great classes of useful plants which minister to these two needs are cereals, 
fruits, vegetables, forages, saccharines, and medicinals among the foods, 
and fibers and forest supplies among the materials providing §helter. 
Human Food 
Human food is chiefly either animal or vegetable in origin. Primitive 
man doubtless was both herbivorous and carnivorous. Wild animals 
furnish as abundant and palatable a food supply as do domesticated animals, 
but the same is not true regarding feral and cultivated plants. It seems 
probable, therefore, that primitive man used meat as his staple food, and 
used vegetable materials to maintain health, to vary his diet, or as a filler. 
In temperate areas, at least, the necessary supply of roots, fruits, and 
seeds was obtained only by arduous search and tedious labor in gathering. 
It could have been abundantly obtainable, also, only during a portion of 
the year, which would have been less true of animal food supplies. On the 
