W. G. Freeman, 75 
CURRENT INVESTIGATIONS IN ECONOMIC BOTANY. 
A Course of Lectures delivered at the University of London 
during the Michaelmas Term, 1904, 
By W. G. Freeman, A.R.C.S., B.Sc., F.L.S., 
Superintendent of Colonial Economic Collections, Imperial Institute. 
I.—Introductory. 
I N the course of a few lectures it is naturally impossible to 
deal with all, or even with the majority of most important 
of the problems engaging the attention of workers in the field of 
economic botany. Accordingly, selection has been made of those 
with which my duties in various parts of the world have brought 
me into contact, and are of interest as examples of current methods 
of economic botanical research. For these reasons attention is 
principally devoted in these lectures to four plants, the sugar-cane, 
the sugar-beet, cotton and maize. 
In this, the first lecture of a course on what is practically a 
new subject in the botanical curriculum of London University, it is 
desirable to consider what we understand by the term “ economic 
botany.” Economic botany comprises the study of the plants and 
plant products, which directly or indirectly are of service to man, 
including their source, distribution, improvement, collection and 
preparation, their properties and uses. 
Economic botany is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, study 
of mankind. Go where we will in the world, even amongst the 
lowest races of mankind, we find considerable knowledge of the 
wild plants of the country, and their properties and uses. On 
plants, primitive, in common with highly-civilized races, are 
ultimately dependent, to a greater or less extent, for their food, 
medicine and clothing. As an advance on the mere possession of 
knowledge of the properties and uses of indigenous plants, one 
often finds amongst savage races, successful cultivation of certain 
plants. This, in its turn, leads to practical efforts to improve 
plants by means of vegetative or seminal selection, which in the 
remote past have resulted in far-reaching results, dealt with in 
detail later. It should not be assumed that in the successful 
practice of the past the reason for each step was necessarily 
understood. The knowledge accumulated was purely empirical, 
yet it was attained by exactly the same method as much knowledge 
