101 
Recent Procress 1n Borany. 
By JoHn M. Courter. 
Mr. Chairman and Meinbers of the Academy: When I face the Indiana 
Academy of Science at its twenty-fifth anniversary, I feel more like speak- 
ing of old times than upon any technical subject. However, perhaps some 
of these reminiscences may appear at the banquet: tonight, and I will re- 
strict myself just now to the program. 
It is very hard for one who has not lived and worked through the 
period covered by the history of this Academy to appreciate the changes 
that have taken place in the science of botany. Those of you who have 
come into the subject during the last decade can hardly have a full ap- 
preciation of what you have missed and of what rapid development has 
taken place. At the time this Academy was being founded, almost all the 
instruction and investigation in botany was in taxonomy or Classification, 
and that was chiefly restricted to the classification of flowering plants. 
I shall not weary you by recounting all of the important changes that have 
taken place since that time, but I wish to point out a few things that have 
impressed me. 
The first impressive change is the tremendous development and differ- 
entiation of the subject during the period covered by the history of this 
Academy. In the background we have still the old historic field of tax- 
onomy, which is being cultivated with greater zeal than ever. But the 
first change to note is the great development of the comparatively new 
science of morphology. In these days morphology has come to mean the 
structure and evolution of the plant kingdom as a whole, and its develop- 
ment has been little short of marvelous. Perhaps the first change from 
the old régime was brought about in this country by the appearance of 
Bessey’s Botany in 1880, and from that date began the development of 
modern morphology in the United States. 
In connection with the development of morphology there have grown 
up various expressions of it that have demanded special technique. The 
first of these to appear was that which is known as cytology. In collect- 
ing the facts in reference to the cell as a unit of structure, morphologists 
soon discovered that something must be known about cell structure, and 
