A CENTURY OF BOTANY IN INDIANA. 239 



was replacing field exploration. There are perhaps at least three reasons 

 why modem morphology did not reach the United States for thirty years 

 after its birth in Europe. One is tHat our flora was still new and intensely 

 interesting. A second is that in the person of Asa Gray, through his Manual 

 and texts, there was a dominating influence in the field of botany, such as 

 would be impossible now. The third reason is perhaps the best one, and that 

 is that our botanists had not begun the habit of going to Europe to study. 

 In fact, botany was not as yet a full fledged profession; it was only an incident. 

 Botanists were chiefly amateurs, and in addition there were a few teachers 

 of the subject, who taught many other things besides. 



At last some botanists went to Europe, and as a result, in 1880, Bessey 

 introduced us to an American presentation of modern morphology as develop- 

 ed by Sachs. Then it was that botanical laboratories began to appear in this 

 state, with microscopes and laboratory guides. In Wabash, in Purdue, and 

 a little later in Indiana, the work began, presently extending to all the col- 

 leges, and finally invading the high schools. Not only did instruction in mod- 

 em morphology begin, but also research, and morphological papers began 

 to issue from several of our laboratories. 



We should appreciate this phase of morphology in passing. Just as in 

 the case of taxonomy, many raorphologists have moved on, but there is 

 always an old guard that never moves on. Perhaps the most significant 

 change introduced by the new morphology was that its material was the whole 

 of the plant kingdom. No longer were the vascular plants the sole repre- 

 sentatives of botany ; but there was a curious rigidity about the morphology 

 of these earlier days. The mature structures only were studied and pigeon- 

 holed. Definitions were rigid and facts were observed as facts, with no 

 thought of their inter-relationships. You will all recall those days as the 

 period of "types," when a few types were selected to represent the whole 

 plant kingdom. The theory was that it was better to discover all the facts 

 about a single plant, than to discover the important facts about plants in 

 general. In other words, there was as yet no conception as to the relative 

 values of facts. And still this was the beginning of botany as a distinct pro- 

 fession in Indiana, and chairs of botany began to be differentiated from 

 chairs of natural history or biology. This is bound to be the case when col- 

 lecting is replaced by technique. Almost any one with the instinct of a 

 naturalist can collect, but to section and interpret needs special training. 



It was approximately in 1890 that a further refinement of morphology 

 entered the field. Strasburger was dominating botany in Europe, and many 

 American students worked in his laboratory. As a result, from 1890 cytology 

 began to be represented in our laboratories. It represented the further 

 development of technique ; it led to the development of ontogeny, so that the 

 study of mature structures gave way to the study of developing structures; 

 and finally comparative ontogeny led to the development of evolutionary 

 sequences. As a consequence, much of our old morphology was relegated 



