BOTANICAL BIOLOGY. 413 



1 am not without liopes that the serious study of botany in tlie lab- 

 oratory will bo in time better cared for. I do not hesitate to claim 

 for it a position of the greatest importance in ordinary scientific edu- 

 cation. All the essential phenomena of living organisms can be read- 

 ily demonstrated upon plants. The necessary ai)pliances are not so 

 costly, and the work of the class room is free from many difficulties 

 with which the student of the animal side of biology has to contend. 



Those however who have seriously devoted themselves to the pur- 

 suit of either morphological or physiological bctany need not now bo 

 wholly at a loss. The splendid laboratory on Plymouth Sound, the 

 erection of which we owe to the energy and enthnsiasui of Prof. Ray 

 Laukester, is open to botanists as well as to zoologists, and aftbrds 

 every opportunity for the investigation of marine ])lants, in which little 

 of late years has been done in this country. At Kew we owe to private 

 munificence a commodious laboratory in which much excellent work 

 has already been done. And this association lias made a small grant 

 in aid of the establishment of a laboratory in the Koyal Botanic Garden 

 at Peradeniya, in Ceylon. It may be hoped that this will aiford facil- 

 ities for work of the same kind as has yielded Dr. Treub such a rich 

 harvest of results in the Buitenzorg Botanic Garden in Java. 



Physiological botany, as I have already pointed out, is a field in 

 which this country in the past has accomi)iished great things. It has 

 not of late however obtained an amount of attention in any way pro- 

 portionate to that devoted to animal physiology. In the interests of 

 physiological science generally, this is much to be deplored ; and I 

 believe that no one was more firmly convinced of this than Mr. Bar- 

 win. Only a short time before his death, in writing to Mr. Romanes on 

 a book that he had recently been reading, he said that the author had 

 made " a gigantic oversight in never considering plants ; these would 

 simplify the problem for him." This goes to the root of the matter. 

 There is, in my judgment, no fundamental biological problem which is 

 not exhibited in a simpler form by plants than by animals. It is possi- 

 ble,however, that the distaste which seems to exist amongst our biolo- 

 gists for physiologi(;al botany, may be due in some measure to the ex- 

 tremely physical point of view from which it has been customary to 

 treat it on the Continent. It is owing in great measure to the method 

 of Mr. Darwin's own admirable researches that in this country wo 

 have been led to a more excellent way. The work which has been 

 hitely done in England seems to me full of the highest promise. Mr. 

 Francis Darwin and Mr. Gardiner have each in different directions 

 shown the entirely new point of view wliich may be obtained by treat- 

 ing plant phenomena as the outcome of the functional activity of pro- 

 toplasm. I have not the least doubt that by pursuing this path En- 

 glish resear(;h will not merely place vegetable physiology, which has 

 hitherto been too much under the influence of Lamarckism, on a more 

 rational basis, but that it will also sensibly react, as it has done often 

 before, on animal physiology. 



