PLANT WORLD FOR OCTOBER, 1919, WAS ISSUED APRIL 10, 1920 



SOME FACTORS IN RESEARCH 1 



B. M. DUGGAR 



Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri 



When I accepted the invitation of the Council of the Botanical 

 Society to present a paper on some phases of research I did not 

 realize that in this reconstruction period there would be so many 

 hammers in use pounding one part or another of the structure of 

 botany and placing a new superstructure upon it in America. 

 However, since the hammer is being used constructively, on the 

 whole, perhaps it is just as well that I also have selected this as 

 one of the tools with which to work today. I take it that the 

 whole spirit of this program is to signify that American botany 

 intends to throw off any indolent satisfaction or pacifism and 

 become warmly assertive, with the avowed purpose of making the 

 science as a whole a greater national force and asset. 



Broadly speaking, the factors in research are all those condi- 

 tions which facilitate not merely immediate productive effort, but 

 which likewise lay the foundation for consistent and sustained 

 progress in the time to come. For the last mentioned reason 

 some of the things which I have to say have to do only vaguely 

 with the immediate factors in research; and where the latter may 

 be specifically identified, I shall limit myself more particularly 

 to considerations arising when one takes merely a physiological 

 view point. 



The science of physiology — or plant physiology, as we are 

 forced to call it — is virtually a new one in this country; rather, 

 it is only within about the last twenty years that it has been free 

 to thrive in more than a few restricted environments. I have 

 here in mind the concept of plant physiology as the whole 

 science of the living plant in action, — the physics and chemistry of 

 life processes, the correlations of organs, tissues, or cells, and the 



1 A symposium paper read before a joint meeting of the Botanical Society of 

 America and the American Phytopathological Society, Baltimore, December 27, 

 1918, as a phase of the general topic "Our Present Duty as Botanists." 



277 



THE PLANT WORLD, VOL. 22, NO. 10, 

 OCTOBER, 1919 



