290 
Economic  Botany. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
June,  1894. 
obtaining  many  important  remedial  agents  from  each  of  these 
groups  are  most  encouraging  to  investigators.  Many  of  the  fungi 
are  proven  to  be  palatable,  highly  nutritious  and  easily  cultivated 
food  plants,  and  it  is  largely  suspicion  and  ignorance  that  prevents 
us  from  making  more  common  use  of  them.  The  many  poisonous 
species  have  made  the  whole  group  suspected,  but  this  fact 
should  encourage  rather  than  retard  pharmaceutical  research,  for 
dangerous  poisons  have  often  proven  useful  remedies. 
As  for  bacteriology,  so  closely  and  directly  is  its  study  related  to 
human  welfare,  and  so  important  are  its  achievements  in  recent 
years  that  it  is  well  entitled  to  rank  as  a  separate  branch  of  economic 
botany.  Its  achievements  in  the  score  of  years  of  its  existence  have 
been  vast,  but  we  may  hope  for  much  greater  results  in  the  future. 
According  to  Sturtevant  there  are  1,192  species  of  plants  that 
have  at  one  time  or  other  been  cultivated  for  food,  and  the  whole 
number  which  are  known  to  have  been  used  as  food,  including  those 
resorted  to  in  time  of  famine,  is  4,090  species,  but  even  the  smaller 
of  these  includes  many  plants  of  little  value.  I  find  even  in 
Smith's  Dictionary  of  Economic  Plants  only  515  food  plants  men- 
tioned, and  this  certainly  would  include  all  of  the  important  kinds. 
Even  of  these  I  judge  at  least  two-thirds  have  either  a  very  doubt- 
ful value  or  only  a  local  or  very  limited  use.  The  great  food  staples 
of  the  world  are  really  few  in  number,  but  there  seems  no  good  rea- 
son why  they  should  not  be  increased  many  fold,  not  merely  by  dis- 
covery of  new  kinds,  but  by  the  improvement  of  old  ones.  If  it  is 
true,  as  some  botanists  believe,  that  wheat  in  its  numerous  varieties, 
now  constituting  probably  the  most  important  food  of  the  human 
race,  was  originally  derived  from  ^Egilops  ovata,  a  grass  of  little 
consequence  in  its  wild  state  even  as  a  forage  plant,  what  possibilities 
are  presented  by  numerous  other  grasses,  if  only  they  could  be  sub. 
jected  to  intelligent  cutivation  ? 
A  man  walking  along  the  coast  of  England  or  France  may  to-day 
find  a  tall,  straight-stemmed,  glaucous-leaved  crucifer,  which  bears 
at  its  apex  a  compact  raceme  of  yellow  flowers.  Its  leaves  are 
lobed  and  somewhat  wavy  or  crispate,  and  the  stem,  when  stripped 
of  them  and  dried,  would  make  a  fair  walking-stick.  The  plant  is 
the  wild  Brassica  oleracece,  from  which  have  been  developed  the 
common  white  cabbage,  red  cabbage,  Savoys,  coleworts,  the  bore- 
cole or  Scotch   kale,  curly  greens,  cauliflower,   broccoli,  kohl- 
