BOTANY. 



By Prof. William (I. Fallow. 



The year 1883 has not been marked by any especially striking' discov 

 ery in regard to the physiology or morphology of plants, although the 

 mass of botanical literature is perhaps greater than in previous years. 

 In this country, in particular, an unusually large number of notes and 

 papers on pluenogams have appeared, and the same is true of papers 

 relating to fungi, while there has been a comparative dearth of writings 

 on mosses and alga*. The works on physiology, although numerous and 

 in many respects important, have not been so elaborate in character as 

 in some years. The countless papers on bacteria can no longer be con- 

 sidered under the head of botany, for by far the greater part of them 

 have a purely medical bearing. 



VEGETABLE ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 



Schimper, in Bot.^Zeitnng, gives the results of observations on the 

 development of chlorophyll-grains and other pigment bodies, and, fol- 

 lowing Fr. Schmitz, who found that in algaB these bodies were not 

 formed from the protoplasm directly but arose from the division of 

 previously existing pigment-grains, Schimper has examined the young 

 parts of plants, as well as seeds, and finds that either chlorophyll-grains 

 or starch-builders are always present, and by their division are formed 

 the pigment-grains found in older parts of the plant'. Th. W. Engel- 

 niann, in Bot. Zeitung, has a paper on color and assimilation in which he 

 considers the question whether the chlorophyll-grains are the only seat 

 of assimilation in green cells, and by using the bacteria-method of detect- 

 ing an evolution of oxygen, he finds that no oxygen is given off unless 

 living chlorophyll-grains are present. Tschirch , in two papers in Bericht. 

 Beutsch. Bot. Gesell. on chlorophyll and the morphology of chlorophyll- 

 grains, regards chlorophyllan, which is identical with Priugsheim's 

 hypochlorin, as the primary oxidation product of chlorophyll, and dif- 

 fers with Meyer in believing that chlorophyll and aleuron-grains are 

 surrounded by a protoplasmic, membrane, and that the coloring matter 

 proper is in the form of an etherial oil rather than of granules. Boehin, 

 in Bot. Zeitung, expresses the opinion that the presence of starch in 

 chlorophyll-grains is not sufficient proof that it is the first product 



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