2 The Living Plant 



boy can grasp the sahent facts in that organized knowledge of 

 plants which we call the Science of Botany, no one person can 

 actually master any more than a limited portion thereof, es- 

 pecially if he have the ambition to know it sufficiently well to 

 aid in expanding the bounds of our knowledge. For the purpose 

 of specialized study, accordingly, there have been developed 

 within the science a number of divisions which are dependent 

 on the nature of the problems presented, and therefore on the 

 methods employed in their study. The divisions are these. First 

 is Classification (called also Systematic Botany, or Taxonomy), the 

 oldest and most fundamental of all, and doubtless the theme of 

 King Solomon's discourse. It establishes the relationships of 

 plants to one another, and arranges them accordingly, while 

 describing and naming them. It is studied through exact ob- 

 servation and comparison of the external parts of plants, which 

 can be kept preserved in a pressed and dried condition in col- 

 lections called Herbaria, while its results are embodied not 

 only in great monographs, but in handbooks, or Manuals, so 

 arranged as to enable any person to identify plants for himself. 

 Second is Morphology, which deals with the parts, or structures, 

 of plants, and establishes their relationships to one another while 

 describing and naming them. Morphology is very much the 

 same to the parts of plants that classification is to plants as a 

 whole. The name in the past has been associated most closely 

 with the comparative study of the large external structures, — 

 roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruits, — and their transforma- 

 tions into tendrils, spines, pitchers and the Uke, but is nowadays 

 given a far wider extension; while special names describe the 

 phases concerned with minute or internal parts, and needing the 

 use of such exact and delicate instruments as the microscope 

 and microtome, — Embryology or "life-history," for the develop- 

 ment of the structures in the individual plant. Anatomy, for 

 the cellular construction, and Cytology for the internal struc- 

 ture of the cells themselves. Third is Physiology, a word which 



