SOME FACTORS IN RESEARCH 285 



tories devoted entirely or primarily to research and graduate 

 work. 



Theoretically we doubtless admit the necessity of close coop- 

 eration between the departments of plant physiology on the one 

 hand and those of chemistry and physics on the other. In our 

 universities and colleges apparently this is not developed to the 

 same extent that it is in England, for one can seldom pick up an 

 English journal containing an important contribution in physi- 

 ology which does not- exhibit and acknowledge the closest coop- 

 eration with the department of chemistry or of physics of the 

 same institution. This to my mind accounts in some degree for 

 the very high standard of work which has been done in England 

 in recent years. We saw it in the work of Marshal Ward some 

 fifteen to twenty years ago, and we see it today in that of various' 

 investigators who occupy prominent positions. I fear that we 

 have not yet yeached the point where we are willing to lay the 

 cards on the table, as it were, in order to secure the assistance 

 of our colleagues in other fundamental sciences. 



Nevertheless, I do not forget that fundamental research gen- 

 erally means individual effort, but there are times when no indi- 

 vidual can adequately encompass the problem which he faces. 

 Whatever may be said about physiology as merely a special phase 

 of physics and chemistry, we who are in the subject know that it 

 is in reality much more than that, and it is scarcely possible for 

 one man to be in all phases and at once a broad physiologist and 

 a thoroughly competent biochemist and biophysicist. Surely, 

 then, the University with its varied departments should promote 

 cooperative effort. But for some reason special institutions with 

 " topical problems" rather than highly specialized departmental 

 research seem to be those who are successfully and chiefly doing 

 cooperative work. 



As to publication, one needs to look back scarcely ten years to 

 the time when the main sources of publication for plant physio- 

 logical and pathological materials were the Botanical Gazette and 

 the Torrey Bulletin, aside, of course, from a few proceedings of 

 societies and the popular bulletins of the agricultural experiment 

 stations and the department at Washington. Today there are 



