Current Problems in Plant Cytology. 
By J. M. MAcFARLANE. 
‘[ Presidential Address to the ‘*Society for Plant Morphology and Physiology,”’ 
delivered at Yale University, December 29, 1899. ] 
We are now met as a “Society for the Study of Plant 
Morphology and Physiology” on the threshold of the closing 
year of the nineteenth century. It is alike appropriate and 
helpful in human affairs that, at the close of each great period 
of endeavor, a brief survey should be made of the achieve- 
ments and failures of the past, and that fresh plans be mapped 
out for higher achievements in the future. Every traveler 
through a new country seeks from time to time some vantage 
point, from, which to survey the ground already trod, and the 
newer regions that lie beyond. I trust that it may not seem 
inappropriate, if I claim the standpoint and vantage ground of 
the living cell as that from which we can best survey our 
domain of plant morphology and physiology. I have accord- 
ingly chosen as a suitable subject for the present occasion 
“Current Problems in Plant Cytology.” 
Who, at the beginning of this nineteenth century, accepting 
the measure of progress in past centuries as a gauge for the 
future, could have predicted that we should now be able to 
boast of so great and noble a heritage? Macroscopic mor- 
phology had then just emerged from the condition of a con- 
fused aggregation of facts and fancies, into that of a stable 
system of correlated principles, thanks to the efforts of 
Linnzus, Bernard de Jussieu and Gartner. The beginnings 
of microscopic morphology had been laid by Malpighi, Grew 
and Casper Wolff, in the preceding centuries, though an 
inspection of their works graphically proves how diligent 
must have been the men, but how imperfect their methods for 
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