286 
Economic  Botany. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
June,  1894. 
and  economic  botany,  which  for  a  thousand  years  had  stood  still, 
now  shows  everywhere  signs  of  the  most  stirring  activity.  Not 
only  are  the  old  departments  of  the  subject  revivified,  but  new  ones 
have  sprung  into  life.  Agricultural  experiment  stations,  in  many 
cases  most  elaborately  equipped  for  the  investigation  of  all  that 
relates  to  useful  plants,  have  been  established  in  every  country  in 
Europe,  and  in  nearly  every  State  in  the  Union ;  courses  in  forestry 
have  been  established  in  some  of  the  European,  and  I  believe  in  at 
least  one  of  our  American  Universities ;  and  various  professional 
schools,  particularly  medical  schools  and  schools  of  pharmacy,  have 
felt  the  new  impulse,  and  established  laboratories  where  medicinal 
plants  are  investigated  structurally,  chemically  and  with  reference  to 
their  physiological  action. 
Let  us  glance  now  at  the  departments  of  Economic  Botany. 
These  may  be  stated  to  be  as  follows:  (i)  Agricultural  Botany. 
(2)  Horticultural  Botany,  with  its  sub-departments  of  Pomology, 
Arboriculture  and  Floriculture.  (3)  Forestry ;  and  (4)  Medical  or 
Pharmaceutical  Botany. 
This  classification  is  in  some  respects  one  of  convenience  and  cus- 
tom rather  than  a  strictly  scientific  one.  It  would  be  hard,  for 
example,  to  draw  a  sharp  line  of  demarkation  between  Agricultural 
and  Horticultural  botany. 
Agricultural  botany,  using  the  term  in  its  commonly  accepted 
sense,  includes  all  knowledge  relating  to  the  plants  which  are  culti- 
vated on  the  farm  in  distinction  from  those  cultivated  in  gardens  or 
orchards,  and  from  those  growing  wild  in  field  or  forest.  It  includes 
the  botany  of  the  cereals,  the  fodder  plants,  the  edible  roots  and 
tubers,  various  textile  plants  and  others  whose  products  are  widely 
used  or  cultivated  on  an  extensive  scale. 
Under  Horticultural  Botany  is  usually  included  the  botany  of 
those  plants  which  are  cultivated  in  gardens  and  orchards,  whether 
for  food  or  other  utilitarian  purposes  or  merely  for  decorative  uses, 
as  in  the  cultivation  of  ornamental  trees,  shrubs  and  flowers. 
Pomology,  more  properly  called  Fructiculture,  is  that  department 
of  it  which  relates  to  the  culture  of  fruits  ;  Arboriculture,  that 
branch  which  relates  to  the  culture  of  ornamental  trees,  and  Flori- 
culture, the  branch  which  relates  to  the  culture  of  flowers. 
Horticulture  is  really  a  branch  of  agriculture,  though  custom  and, 
to  a  certain  extent,  convenience,  maintain  a  distinction  between 
