INTRODUCTION 9 



his tools, but he has to keep in touch with all the work 

 and discoveries of the others who are engaged on investi- 

 gations akin to his own, and this necessitates an amount 

 of reading that rivals the columns of print poured out 

 by the daily press. Every country that possesses 

 universities and learned societies is rivalling every 

 other in the production and publication of additions 

 to scientific knowledge. One who is himself adding 

 to this must be aware of what all the others are doing, 

 lest he repeat work already done, or lest he lose the help 

 and inspiration that other work may be to his own. 



We see, then, in the modern science of botany a 

 philosophic whole, which is only to be attained by the 

 combination of the results of a number of separate lines 

 of work, each of which requires special technical study. 

 In the following chapters the more important of these 

 branches will each be dealt with shortly. In such small 

 compass it will not be possible to give very many facts, 

 but the text-books are full of them ; it will not be 

 possible to go into very abstruse discussions the 

 learned Transactions are full of them ; but it will, I 

 hope, even in so few words, be possible to illustrate the 

 attitude of the workers in each branch of the study, 

 and to indicate the field in which they labour. Then 

 at the end of the book the reader should be in a position 

 to see for himself how it all hangs together and bears 

 on the one great problem in biology the evolution of 

 life. 



