Current Problems in Plant Cytology. 



By J. M. Macfarlane. 



tPresidential Address to the " Society for Plant Morphology and Physiology," 

 delivered at Vale University, December 29, iSgg.] 



We are now met as a " Society for the Study of Plant 

 Morphology and Physiology" on the threshold of the closing 

 year of the nineteenth centur>'. It is alike appropriate and 

 helpful in human affairs that, at the close of each great period 

 of endeavor, a brief sur\'ey should be made of the achieve- 

 ments and failures of the past, and that fresh plans be mapped 

 out for higher achievements in the future. Every traveler 

 through a new country seeks from time to time some vantage 

 point, from, which to survey the ground already trod, and the 

 newer regions that lie beyond. I trust that it may not seem 

 ■inappropriate, if I claim the standpoint and vantage ground of 

 the living cell as that from which we can best survey our 

 domain of plant morphology and physiology. I have accord- 

 ingly chosen as a suitable subject for the present occasion 

 " Current Problems in Plant Cytology." 



Who, at the beginning of this nineteenth century, accepting 

 the measure of progress in past centuries as a gauge for the 

 future, could have predicted that we should now be able to 

 boast of so great and noble a heritage ? Macroscopic mor- 

 phology had then just emerged from the condition of a con- 

 fused aggregation of facts and fancies, into that of a stable 

 system of correlated principles, thanks to the efforts of 

 Linnaeus, Bernard de Jussieu and Gartner. The beginnings 

 of microscopic morphology had been laid by Malpighi, Grew 

 and Casper Wolff, in the preceding centuries, though an 

 inspection of their works graphically proves how diligent 

 must have been the men, but how imperfect their methods for 



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