Plants in Their Economic Relation to Every savage race is intimately asso ciated with the flora of its region. Having no means by which to supply the ordinary necessaries of life through foreign trade, as do many civilized races, the savage has learned from necessity to know the precise qualities of the plants about him as foods, textiles, poisons, dyes, tans, fuels, etc. In connection with the making of a single aboriginal instrument, such as a bow or a fire-drill and block, there is required on the part of the savage a knowledge of the strength, elasticity, texture and other qualities of all the kinds of wood occurring in the range of his travels, such as is not possessed by one person in a thousand among highly civilized races. The economic value of a cor rect and discriminating record of the uses of plants among aboriginal peoples is evident. The influence of a familiar flora in attracting a savage race to a wider geographic range or that of a strange flora in limiting migration in any direction is a natural outcome of the savage's exact knowledge of the plants of his native region. The practice of some of the migratory races of prehistoric man to trans port their cultivated plants with them has re sulted in the wide extension of these plants from the regions they naturally occupied. From this association it turns out that a crit ical study of the origin and distribution of the plants cultivated by aboriginal races throws important light on their prehistoric migrations. Some of these botanical facts appear to be of very great antiquity, perhaps even antedating those furnished by aboriginal arts or by language. This study of the rela tion of primitive man to his plant environ ment is called ethnobotany, or aboriginal bot any. Some of the processes of plant life arc important to. man as being fundamental to his existence. The plant is an engine which through the energy furnished by sunlight is capable of transforming inorganic substances into organic compounds, without which animal life could not exist. The ordinary economic relations of plants to civilized man are many and enter as important factors into such arts and industries as agriculture, horticulture, medicine, manufacture and commerce. The production and elaboration of plant products and their transportation from those parts of the world in which they can be and are pro duced to other parts in which they are needed occupy probably the largest part of the en ergies of the human race. See ANATOMY or PLA NTS.
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