I mention this not as an isolated example of what is being accomplished in commercial botany, but as a fair illustration of the thoroughness with which the problems are being attacked. It should be further stated that at the garden in question assiduous students of the subject are eagerly welcomed and are provided with all needed appliances for carrying on technical, chemical, and pharmaceutical investigations. Therefore I am justified in saying that there is every reason for believing that in the very near future new sources of our most important products will be opened up, and new areas placed under successful cultivation.
At this point attention must be called to a very modest and convenient hand-book on the Commercial Botany of the Nineteenth Century, by Mr. Jackson, of the Botanical Museum attached to the Royal Gardens, Kew, which not only embodies a great amount of well-arranged information relative to the new useful plants, but is, at the same time, a record of the existing state of things in all these departments of activity.
VIII. Fragrant Plants.—Another illustration of our subject might be drawn from a class of plants which repays close study from a biological point of view, namely, those which yield perfumes.
In speaking of the future of our fragrant plants we must distinguish between those of commercial value and those of purely horticultural interest. The former will be less and less cultivated in proportion as synthetic chemistry by its manufacture of perfumes replaces the natural by the artificial products, for example, coumarin, vanillin, nerolin, heliotropin, and even oil of winter-green.
But do not understand me as intimating that chemistry can ever furnish substitutes for living fragrant plants. Our gardens will always be sweetened by them, and the possibilities in this direction will continue to extend both by contributions from abroad and by improvement in our present cultivated varieties. Among the foreign acquisitions are the fragrant species of Andropogon. Who would suspect that the tropical relatives of our sand-loving grasses are of high commercial value as sources of perfumery oils?
The utility to the plant of fragrance in the flower, and the relation of this to cross-fertilization, are apparent to even a casual observer. But the fragrance of an aromatic leaf does not always give us the reason for its being.
It has been suggested for certain cases that the volatile oils escaping from the plants in question may, by absorption, exert a direct influence in mitigating the fierceness of action of the sun's rays. Other explanations have also been made, some of which are even more fanciful than the last.
