84 Morphology BOOK i 



view that physiological need largely determines form. They 

 limited the direction and the extent to which that deter- 

 mination can occur, insisting that it must fall within the 

 limits of the members of which they held the plant to 

 consist. In other words, they considered organography 

 subsidiary in every respect to morphology. 



Adhering in this way to the view that the plant is built 

 up by modifications or metamorphoses of a few funda- 

 mental members, Vines, agreeing with Bower, rejected the 

 suggestion of Goethe that the foliage leaf is the most 

 primitive, and that in an ascending series, bracts, perianth 

 leaves, and sporophylls represent more and more complete 

 metamorphoses of it ; he adhered to the theory of Cela- 

 kowsky and of Bower that the sporophyll is the earlier, 

 accepting the view that progressive sterilization of originally 

 sporogenous tissue has played a great part in the meta- 

 morphosis. The phylogeny of the leaf on this theory 

 supports the view of the descending or regressive meta- 

 morphosis of Goethe. 



The fundamental difference between the strict morpho- 

 logists and the organographists appears, then, to lie in the 

 importance attached by the former to the power claimed 

 by them to be inherent in the living substance to develop 

 in the direction of increasing complexity of form apart 

 from the influence of external conditions. Adaptation to 

 environment in the absence of such tendency is not suffi- 

 cient ; it does not necessarily involve complexity or higher 

 organization at all, for the more lowly organisms are as 

 perfectly adapted to their environment as are the highest. 



Such was the position of the controversy when the 

 century closed. Both views had their supporters, and 

 neither could be said to be indisputably established. 



