THE PRESENT POSITION OF FLORAL 



BIOLOGY. 



DURING the last twelve months several important 

 books and papers (i) dealing with the natural 

 history of the flower have been published, and it may 

 be well at this period to review our position, and also to 

 endeavour to trace the general ideas that hold sway in this 

 department of knowledge. The republication of C. K. 

 Sprengel's Entdeckte Geheimniss der Natttr (1793) enables 

 any one easily to compare our present knowledge with his, 

 and it is rather humiliating to find how very little we have 

 advanced in the direction of deeper understanding of floral 

 phenomena. We have indeed accumulated a stupendous 

 mass of details, but except that for .Sprengel's old-fashioned 

 teleology we have substituted the modern one based upon 

 evolution, invoking "adaptation" where he refers to "design 

 of nature," we are really not much further forward. The 

 chief advances made have been effected by Darwin and by 

 H. Muller, who have given us the " Knight-Darwin-Muller 

 hypothesis" and the "Theory of Flowers". No branch of 

 biology has suffered more than that under consideration, 

 from the pushing to extremes of the adaptation idea. The 

 dangers of this course have often been pointed out, and in 

 other branches not without good effect ; but a perusal of 

 almost any work upon floral biology will show that here at 

 least, adaptation is made to explain almost everything ; 

 biological meanings are forced into every detail of floral 

 structure, often without any evidence whatever. The fact 

 that the subject is so admirably suited for popular treatment, 

 is probably responsible for much of this. 



Rather than confess that we do not know the meaning 

 of a particular structure or phenomenon, we give a glib 

 "explanation" by saying that it is an adaptation to some- 

 thing. So far has this gone, that even among professional 

 botanists there is an idea, perhaps unconscious, that the 

 subject is exhausted and affords no room for good research, 



