368 BOTANY : ITS POSITION AND PEOSPECTS 



absorb and transcend the results of observation over lesser 

 areas, with their comparatively clear demarcation of species. 

 From such broad surveys came the gradual conviction that 

 systematic botany was at once too artificial and too sectional to 

 represent truly its professed ideal of natural grouping, being 

 rigid and definite where nature proved to be plastic and variable. 

 Only after dealing with thousands of specimens in the collec- 

 tions which passed under bis scrutiny could he exclaim * more 

 specimens always break down characters,' i.e. destroy the 

 rigidity of botanical definition and extend the fringe of in- 

 dividual variabiHty. It began to grow clear that over a 

 sufficiently large range every variety might exist between 

 two allied species, and that where these intermediate forms 

 had not chanced to be exterminated so as to leave the extreme 

 forms in isolated contrast, it was impossible to lay down where 

 the one ' species ' ended and the other began. 



But this upset the doctrines everywhere taught. Hooker, 

 reahsing as no other botanist the difficulties involved and their 

 reaction upon his science, divined in them one secret of the 

 ineffectiveness he deplored in systematic botany. System, 

 he saw, broke down at its widest extension. Unknown to 

 its expositors, it had become formalised and abstract ; it 

 awaited a new interpretation to revive its powers. 



Meantime, the same abstract formahsm had invaded the 

 lecture-rooms. All that could be done for the regeneration 

 of botany was to improve the teaching of it, first, as has been 

 seen, by setting examination papers which demanded a training 

 not in simple memory, but in thought and observation ; then 

 by aiding in the preparation of the right kind of books for 

 students and the right kind of lectures, in new organisation 

 at the Universities and in the pubhcations of the learned 

 societies. His hopes take shape in a letter written to Huxley 

 in the earlier part of 1856 : 



My own impression is that we shall make no great advance 

 in teaching Nat. Science in this country, except by some 

 joint effort of Botanists and Zoologists who should pave the 

 way by propounding a strictly scientific elementary system, 

 — ^were this once effected we have sufficient command 



