The coastland times. [volume] (Mnateo [i.e. Manteo], N.C.) 1947-1959, 1953-11-13

kind through so many centuries.
1t does seem more than a little
curious, however, that when
modern man has found it pos
sible to develop such magnificent
tools and such extraordinary
production methods, he has never
seriously looked to see what he
might produce if he went back
to the wilderness and examined
the plants that are still there. 1t
is more than little remarkable
that when he has been able to
find more than 200 uses for corn
and more than 200 uses for soy
beans, he has not found even one
use for most of the nearly 30O,-
600 species of plants which bot
anists have identified.
This is all the more strange
when scientific men have had
sufficient curiosity to classify the
orders and species of plants, and
to lay away specimens by the
millions in their dry botanical
collections; it is remarkable that
they should have been content to
stop at this point, while manifest
ing little intelligent curiosity as
to whether more of these species
thus named and classified might
conceivably be cultivated to the
service of mankind.
Those ancient agronomists had
only their muscles and fingers
and toes and their sticks and
stones for tools. They had to
select species whose obvious
merits might assure them food
and fiber for survival.
Ready and waiting in the lab
oratories of modern men are tools
of inquiry which, if applied to
the vegetable kingdom, might
well disclose substances worth
eventual billions in the world
economy. That primitive man
knew nothing about chromato-
graphy spectroscopy. He had no
radioscope tracer techniques. He
knew nothing about X-ray diff
fraction. He possessed no mira
red, no ultraviolet and no visible
light spectrophotometers. He had
no names for physics or chem
istry, much less any knowledge
of either. He knew nothing of
plant genetics. He was not much
of an engineer and possessed no
tireless motors with which to ac-
complish endless hard work.
All these tools and many more
are available today. We use the
200-inch telescope to try to pene-
trate the sterile secrets of outer
space. We range the mountains
and valleys from tropics to poles
in search of minerals. We find
new uses for new minerals. We
plumb the farthest depths of the
ocean to discover its character,
and we process waters from the
sea to manufacture chemicals and
metals. We pull nitrogen down
out of the air and pull innumer-
able rabbits out of innumerable
hats.
Yet We close our eyes to the
green potentials of the annually
renewable, ever-reproducable,
and almost completely unexplor-
ed frontier of green and golden
wealth with which nature has
clothed the land. So far as in
telligent curiosity is concerned,
so far as science is concerned, so
far as government is concerned,
it is just there, We no longer be-
ieve in COLLINS, nor suppose that
swallows hibernate in the mud
at the bottoms of ponds. We no
longer believe that the earth is
flat. Yet we still depend for $3.50
of all our agricultural production
upon the few dozens of species
of plants selected by the hairy
hands of unnameable primitive
ancestors.
One child might hold in his
two hands a complete collection
of the seeds of all the plants that
man has so far found it economic
to cultivate. A man might pinch
between two fingers at once one
seed of each of the kinds of the
plants which occupy most of
the cultivated areas of the entire
earth. Probably no mo'e than
1900 species are cultivated at all,
perhaps fewer; only few dozens
are major crops anywhere.
Is this because modern man has
subjected the wilderness plants
to his keen tools of scientific in
quiry and found them useless? 1t
is not. He just has not looked.
Every plant is made up of
chemical compounds which ma
ture has arranged. These COM
pounds are usually produced by
soil and water, sunshine and air,
much more cheaply than any
chemist can duplicate them in the