238 PROCEEDINGS OF THE INDIANA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



In 1835, Riddell, one of our western botanical explorers, published a 

 synopsis of the flora of the western states, including an area represented by 

 ten or twelve states now, extending from Ohio on the east, and including the 

 Northwest Territories on the west. The synopsis includes lichens, liver- 

 worts and mosses, in addition to the vascular plants, and still the list enumer- 

 ates only 1,802 species, among which were all the known Indiana plants; 

 but it set the pace, and subsequent explorers filled in the gaps. 



Shortly after this, Prince Alexander Philip JMaximilian visited New Har- 

 mony, and in 1839 published a list of sixty trees growing in the vicinity of 

 that scientific center. This is the first published list of Indiana trees, so far 

 as I know, and it is no wonder that the forest of the lower Wabash should have 

 attracted Prince Ma.ximilian's attention, for it represents the culmination 

 of our Indiana tree vegetation. 



Another interesting early publi^jation is that of Lajiham, a botanist identi- 

 fied with Wisconsin rather than witli Indiana, but who published in 1853 a 

 list of the grasses of the -states bordering on the great lakes. First the trees 

 and then the grasses of Indiana were selected for special consideration. 



During the next twenty-five years, this kind of work continued as the 

 only phase of botany in Indiana, or anywhere else in the United States. An 

 increasing number of naturalists, as all Ijotanists of that time could be called, 

 collected and recorded the vascular plants of their neighborhoods. County 

 lists Tnultiplied, occasional state lists appeared, and now and then particular 

 families were singled out for presentation. It may hv of interest to know that 

 the l)ibliography to which I have had access inchides 132 titles dealing with 

 the ta.xouomy of the vascular plants of Indiana, representing 45 authors. 

 As a result of all this work, the Aascular Hora of Indiana liecame gradually 

 known, and finally what nuiy be called the first stage of botanical develop- 

 ment ceased to be the dominant phase, and gave i)lace to a second. 



This does not mean that such work has becji completed even yet, but it 

 does mean that it is now only local and (x-casional, rather than general and 

 universal. 



One who searches among the titles of this taxonotnic period, as it may 

 be called, can obtain occasional glimpses of other i)hases of botany in the 

 nascent stage. A taxonomist occasionally was interested not only in the 

 classification of his collections, but also in habitats and distribution, and 

 was thus the forerunner of the ecologist. Now and then a botanist can be 

 detected who watched the development of some plant from its seedling stage 

 to its maturity, and was thus the forerunner of the morjjhologists of today, 

 who study the ontogeny of plants. But morphology was gross, and ecology 

 was "without form and void." 



It was approximately in 1880 that the change came. Ever since 1850, 

 European botany had been feeling the stimulus of Hofmeister, and had been 

 developing what is kno^^^l as modern morphology-, the morphology of m'nute 

 structures. The laboratory with its microscopes and re-agents and sections 



