Abstract
ON more than one occasion it has been pointed out in these columns that the study of economic botany is neglected by our universities and colleges. But though educational authorities have failed to make provision for students and research in economic botany, Kew has long been a training school from which men have been sent to all parts of the world, and a centre of expert advice on vegetable products. For thirty years or more a course of lectures on economic botany, intended to prepare men for service in India and the colonies, has been given in the museums of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the course just finished, by Mr. J. M. Hillier, the keeper was attended by twenty gardeners in training. It is desirable that the study of vegetable economics should be encouraged in great commercial centres such as Glasgow, Liverpool and Belfast, as suggested by Prof. Bower in an address referred to in NATURE of December 18, 1902 (vol. lxvii. p. 165); but it must not be forgotten that, while universities and educational authorities have practically ignored the subject, Kew has been steadily training practical botanists and investigators for botanic gardens and other establishments at home and abroad. As a result there is now scarcely a botanic garden in India and the colonies which has not on its staff one or more men trained at Kew or recommended by the director of the Royal Gardens. Kew affords facilities for scientific and technical training in botany unequalled by any other institution, and it is satisfactory to know that so many members of the staffs of our botanic gardens have been trained there.
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University and Educational Intelligence . Nature 68, 407 (1903). https://doi.org/10.1038/068407b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/068407b0