RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE 413 



the most striking is the discovery that the daily and weekiy 

 fluctuations in the number of flowers (upon which, of course, 

 the cotton yield depends) are directly controlled by weather 

 conditions which operated a month before the flowers opened. 

 Obviously here we have a new principle, of unknown importance 

 and implication, in the physiological study of the living plant. 

 The author employs the term predetermination to characterise 

 it. The work of Dr. Balls, which deals also with soil-fertility, 

 soil texture, soil depth, shortage of soil-water, over-watering, 

 root-asphyxiation and climate, will go far to emphasise the 

 importance and fruitfulness of the change in general outlook 

 to which plant physiology is rapidly advancing. 



With regard to further recent plant physiological papers and 

 research results, reference should be made to " Physiological 

 Abstracts," 191 7, vol. ii. nos. 1-8 in which some 500 short 

 abstracts have appeared since April last. 



The general conclusion to be drawn from a survey of 

 recent advance in plant physiology appears to be that the 

 subject is about to become one of the basal pure sciences 

 underlying a complex system of industrial application in the 

 business of plant growth, cultivation, and cropping. But it is 

 also clear that the plant physiology of to-morrow will scarcely 

 be recognisable in relation to the plant physiology of yesterday, 

 and even of to-day. The plant physiology of the past fifty 

 years, in many quarters, may well be likened to that type of 

 adult which is spoken of as having never seen a childhood. It 

 has, in the scientific world, scarce been recognised as a distinct 

 science at all. There is even as yet no single British scientific 

 journal, among hundreds devoted to other particular aspects 

 of research, devoted to it. Its followers have been largely made 

 up of botanists, morphologists, systematists and biochemists 

 who have turned their attention to physiological investigations 

 upon isolated processes and isolated organs in a manner mimic- 

 ing the parallel researches of animal physiologists. In the 

 result the subject is now out of touch with the living and 

 growing plant, developing under natural and healthy condi- 

 tions. There exists an enormous and almost untrodden realm 

 of physiological observation and experiment concerned with 

 the living plant as a whole, and in relation to its environment 

 throughout its complete life-cycle. It is such observations 

 which must form the basis of a true science of plant physiology, 



