Excerpt from Popular Economic Botany: Or Description of the Botanical and Commercial Characters of the Principal Articles of Vegetable Origin, Used for Food, Clothing, Tanning, Dyeing, Building, Medicine, Perfumery, EtcVegetable products constitute nine-twelfths of the whole commerce in raw produce which employs the vast mercan tile marine of this great kingdom. They furnish us with the bulk of our food and clothing, our medicine and our building materials, and with many other necessaries and luxuries. It may be argued, that most of the benefits we derive from the vegetable kingdom have been discovered without the aid of science. True, but is not this a great and powerful argument in favour of the application of scientific investigation in this department? For if so much has been done without its aid, how much may we not hope will be effected when the principles of scientific research, which have effected such miracles in every other depart ment, are brought to bear upon that of Economic Botany?About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.