The Queen's Jubilee Prize Essay of the Royal Botanic Society of London

Abstract

PROBABLY the last of the Jubilee productions has seen the light by the appearance of an article in the Quarterly Record of the Royal Botanic Society of London for the three months ending March last under the title of “Fifty Years of Economic Botany.” The article in question forms the essay to which the Council of the Royal Botanic Society has awarded its gold medal and a purse of fifty guineas. The author is Mr. John W. Ellis, L.R.C.P. It needs only a casual glance to discover how deficient this short essay is, not only in consequence of the numerous omissions of very important plants and products, but also on account of the imperfect information given under many of the headings. Thus the writer tells his readers that China grass and rhea are two distinct fibres furnished by allied plants, the former by Bæhmeria nivea and the latter by B. tenacissima, while the fact is that China grass and rhea are one and the same thing, B. tenacissima being a synonym of B.nivea. In a casual reference to “Moong” fibre the author is apparently quite ignorant of the fact that its botanical source is Saccharum munja, Roxb. New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax) is introduced under textiles, but why is not apparent, for the author concludes his paragraph as follows—“Not having been introduced during the period to which this essay refers, any further mention of this interesting fibre—for which it has frequently been attempted to find a place in the British market—is unnecessary.” Why “gun cotton and its derivatives” should occupy a special chapter it is difficult to say, seeing that this explosive substance is not a direct product of the vegetable kingdom; the author however apparently looks upon it as a much more important vegetable product than the species of cinchona, the ipecacuanha, coca, jalap, or the multitude of new drugs that have occupied such a prominent place in men's minds for the last twenty years. The success that has attended the acclimatisation of the cinchonas in our Indian possessions, whither they were introduced some twenty or thirty years since, when there was a great fear lest the supply of bark from South America should fail because of the great demand, and the consequent reduction in the price of quinine from a guinea to its present price of two shillings per ounce, are facts of sufficient importance, one would think, to be noted in any record of the progress of useful plants. And the same might also be said with regard to Erythroxylon Coca, considering to what purpose cocaine is now being put, but the author—a member of the medical profession—has apparently a wholesome dread of drugs, and for once has ignored all consideration of them. He seems to have been content to consult very old books for his facts throughout and to have completely passed over modern authorities; consequently his statements are both antiquated and incorrect.