Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/71

Rh the total number of species of flowering plants utilized to any considerable extent by man in his civilized state does not exceed, in fact it does not quite reach, one per cent.

The disproportion between the plants which are known and those which are used becomes much greater when we take into account the species of flowerless plants also. Of the five hundred ferns and their allies we employ for other than decorative purposes only five; the mosses and liverworts, roughly estimated at five hundred species, have only four which are directly used by man. There are comparatively few algæ, fungi, or lichens which have extended use.

Therefore, when we take the flowering and flowerless together, the percentage of utilized plants falls far below the estimate made for the flowering alone.

Such a ratio between the number of species known and the number used justifies the inquiry which I have proposed for discussion at this name—namely, Can the short list of useful plants be increased to advantage? If so, how?

This is a practical question; it is likewise a very old one. In one form or another, by one people or another, it has been asked from early times. In the dawn of civilization, mankind inherited from savage ancestors certain plants, which had been found amenable to simple cultivation, and the products of these plants supplemented the spoils of the chase and of the sea. The question which we ask now was asked then. "Wild plants were examined for new uses; primitive agriculture and horticulture extended their bounds in answer to this inquiry. Age after age has added slowly and cautiously to the list of cultivable and utilizable plants, but the aggregate additions have been, as we have seen, comparatively slight.

The question has thus no charm of novelty, but it is as practical to-day as in early ages. In fact, at the present time, in view of all the appliances at the command of modern science, and under the strong light cast by recent biological and technological research, the inquiry which we propose assumes great importance. One phase of it is being attentively and systematically regarded in the great experiment stations, another phase is being studied in the laboratories of chemistry and pharmacy, while still another presents itself in the museums of economic botany.

Our question may be put in other words, which are even more practical. What present likelihood is there that our tables may, one of these days, have other vegetables, fruits, and cereals than those which we use now? What chance is there that new fibers may supplement or even replace those which we spin and weave, that woven fabrics may take on new vegetable colors, that