INTRODUCTION. 
inCONOMIC Botany may be defined as the study of 
^ plants and their products with reference to their 
uses or possible uses in the arts, manufactures, or commerce. 
While thus a branch of Botany, it includes portions of, or 
comes into close contact with, many other departments 
of science, including Agriculture, Chemistry, Political 
Economy, Economic Zoology, Animal Physiology, &c. 
When, in the yet distant future, we shall have attained 
to a good knowledge of Economic Botany, we shall know, 
among other things, what products are yielded by all plants, 
what particular plants or classes of plants yield particular 
products or classes of products, how the plants form these 
products, how they are best collected and prepared for 
further use, how the yield may be improved in quantity or 
quality, and what use may be made of every product. The 
progress of Economic Botany must therefore go hand in hand 
with that of agriculture and the selective improvement of 
crops ; it will depend largely on progress in chemistry, 
vegetable physiology, and other subjects which to the un¬ 
thinking appear of little or no “ practical ” value. 
The student of Economic Botany, especially if he occupy 
a post in which immediate practical application of his 
knowledge thereof be required for daily use, is drawn in 
two somewhat conflicting directions, the one determined by 
the desire to know and find out as much as possible about 
every product of the vegetable kingdom, regardless of any 
immediate practical money-making application of that 
knowledge to the needs of the markets and commerce of 
the day, the other determined by the desire to find out new, 
useful, and valuable products and ways of using them, or 
new and improved methods of cultivating or preparing old 
products, thus rendering their cultivation more profitable. 
