PREFACE 



In these days of intense activity, when hundreds of papers are 

 being published in every field of botany in a steadily increasing 

 number of periodicals and in a multitude of languages, no apology 

 is needed for an attempt to summarize the existing state of our 

 knowledge in any branch of the subject and to point out the future 

 possibilities in it. Since the publication of Coulter and Chamber- 

 lain's "Morphology of Angiosperms" in 1903, no comprehensive 

 account of this aspect of botany has appeared in the English lan- 

 guage. 



The original impetus for writing this work resulted from a course 

 of lectures which I gave on the subject in 1930 when I was teaching 

 at the Agra College. Several colleagues and pupils then suggested 

 that I should produce a book on the embryology of angiosperms. 

 This suggestion was repeated by Professor G. Tischler of the Uni- 

 versity of Kiel, whom I visited in 1936. Teaching and adminis- 

 trative duties and other difficulties made it impossible for me to 

 carry on this work in India at the speed I should have liked. Soon 

 after the war was over in 1945, therefore, I took the manuscript to 

 the United States in order to revise it and put it in shape for publi- 

 cation. 



In a strict sense, embryology is confined to a study of the embryo, 

 but most botanists also include under it the events which lead on 

 to fertilization. I am in agreement with this wider comprehension 

 of the subject and have therefore included in this volume not only 

 an account of the embryo and endosperm, but also an account of 

 the development of the male and female gametophytes and fertiliza- 

 tion. To emphasize the recent trends of research in the subject, 

 two chapters of a general nature have been added, one dealing with 

 embryology in relation to taxonomy, and the other with experi- 

 mental embryology. In the former, an attempt has been made to 

 indicate the possibilities of the embryological method in the solu- 

 tion of problems of systematic botany. In the latter, emphasis 

 has been placed on the contacts between embryology, cytology, 

 genetics, and plant physiology. 



