456 



NA TURE 



[September 9, 1897 



culture, with their special demands on botany, shows one phase ; 

 the progress of bacteriology, paleontology, pathology, economic 

 and geographical botany, all asking special questions, suggests 

 another. In each case men are encouraged to go more and 

 more deeply into the particular problems raised. 



Identification of flowers in Egyptian tombs, of pieces of wood 

 in Roman excavations, the sorting of hay-grasses for analysis, or 

 seeds in the warehouses ; the special classifications of seedlings 

 used by foresters, or of trees in winter, and so on, all afford 

 examples. It is carried far, as witness the immense labour it is 

 found worth while for experts to devote to the microscopic 

 analysis of seeds and fruits liable to adulteration, or to the re- 

 cognition of the markings in imprints of fossil leaves, or of 

 characters like leaf-scars, bud-scales, lenticels, and so on, by 

 which trees may be determined even from bits of twigs. 



If we look at the great groups of plants from a broad point of 

 view, it is remarkable that the Fungi and the Phanerogams 

 occupy public attention on quite other grounds than do the 

 Algce, Mosses, and Ferns. Algae are especially a physiologists' 

 group, employed in questions on nutrition, reproduction, and 

 cell-division and growth ; the Bryophyta and Pteridophyta are, 

 on the other hand, the domain of the morphologist concerned 

 with academical questions such as the Alternation of Generations 

 and the Evolution of the higher plants. 



Fungi and Phanerogams, while equally or even more em- 

 ployed by specialists in Morphology and Physiology, appeal 

 widely to general interests, and evidently on the ground of 

 utility. Without saying that this enhances the importance of 

 either group, it certainly does induce scientific attention to 

 them. I 



I need hardly say that comparisons of the kind I am making, \ 

 invidious though they may appear, in no way imply detraction [ 

 from the highest honour deservedly paid to men who, like 

 Thuret, Schmitz, and Thwaites in the past, and Bornet, Wille, ; 

 and Klebs in the present, have done and are doing so much to 

 advance our academical knowledge of the Algae ; and Klebs' 

 recent masterpiece of sustained physiological work, indeed, 

 promises to be one of the most fruitful contributions to the study 

 of variation that even this century has produced. Nor must we 

 in England forget Farmer's work on Ascophylluvi, and on the 

 nuclei and cell-divisions of Hepaiiae ; and while Bower and 

 Campbell have laid bare by their indefatigable labours the 

 histological details of the Mosses and Vascular Cryptogams, and 

 carried the questions of Alternation of Generations and the 

 evolution of these plants so far, that it would almost seem little 

 remains to be done with Hoffmeister's brilliant conception but 

 to ask whither it is leading us ; the genetic relationships have 

 become so clear, even to the details, that the recent discovery by 

 Ikeno and Hirase of spermatozoids in the pollen tubes of Cycas 

 and Gingko almost loses its power of surprising us, because the 

 facts fit in so well with what was already taught us by these and 

 other workers. 



It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of these 

 comparative studies, not only of the recent Vascular Crypto- 

 gams, but also of the Fossil Pteridophyta, which, in the hands 

 of Williamson, Scott, and Seward, are yielding at every turn 

 new building stones and explanatory charts of the edifice of 

 Evolution on the lines laid down by Darwin. 



All these matters, however, serve to prove my present con- 

 tention, that the groups referred to do not much concern the 

 general public ; whereas, on turning to the Fungi and Phane- 

 rogams, we find quite a different state of affairs. It is very 

 significant that a group like the Fungi should have attracted so 

 much scientific attention, and aroused popular interest at the 

 same time. In addition to their importance from more ac- 

 ademical points of view — for they claim the attention of mor- 

 phologist and physiologist as much as any group, as the work of 

 Wager, Massee, Trow, Hartog, and Harper, and an army of 

 continental investigators, with Brefeld, Von Tavel, Magnus, 

 &c., at their head, has shown — the Fungi appeal to wider 

 interests on many grounds, but especially on that of utility. The 

 fact that Fungi affects our lives directly has been driven home, 

 and whether as poisons or foods, destructive moulds or ferment- 

 ation-agents, parasitic mildews or disease germs, they occupy 

 more of public interest than all other Cryptogams together, the 

 flowering plants alone rivalling them in this respect. 



A marked feature of the period we live in will be the great 

 advances made in our knowledge of the uses, of plants. Of 

 course, this development of Economic Botany has gone hand in 

 .hand with the progress of Geographical Botany and the extension 



NO. 1454, VOL. 56] 



of our planting and other interests in the colonies, but the useful 

 applications of Botany to the processes of home industries are 

 increasing also. 



The information acquired by travellers exploring new coun- 

 tries, by orchid-collectors, prospectors for new fibres or india- 

 rubber, or resulting from the experiences of planters, foresters, 

 and observant people, living abroad, has a value in money which 

 does not here concern us ; but it has also a value to science, for 

 the facts collected, the specimens brought home, the processes 

 observed, the results of analyses, the suggestions gathered — in 

 short, the puzzles propounded by these wanderers — all stimulate 

 research, and so have a value not to be expressed in terms of 

 money. 



The two react mutually, and I am convinced that the stimulus 

 of the questions asked by commerce of botanical science has had, 

 and is having, an important effect in promoting its advance. 

 The best proof to be given of the converse — that Botany is really 

 useful to commerce — is afforded by the ever- increasing demands 

 for answers to the questions of the practical man. At the risk 

 of touching the sensibilities of those who maintain that a 

 university should regard only the purely academical aspects of a 

 science, I propose to discuss some cases where the reciproca} 

 influences of applied, or useful, and purely academic or useless, 

 botany — useless because no use has yet been made of it, as some 

 one has wittily put it — have resulted in gain to both. In doing 

 this, I wish to clearly state my conviction that no scientific man 

 should be guided or restricted in his investigations by any 

 considerations whatever as to the commercial or money value of 

 his results ; to patent a method of cultivating a bacillus, to keep, 

 secret the composition of a nutritive medium, to withhold any 

 evidence, is anti-scientific, for by the nature of the case it is 

 calculated to prevent improvement — i.e. to impede progress. 

 It is not implied that there is anything intrinsically wrong irk 

 protecting a discovery : all I urge is that it is opposed to the 

 scientific spirit. 



But the fact that a scientific spirit is found to have a com- 

 mercial value also — for instance, Wehmer's discovery that the 

 mould fungus, Citryoviyces, will convert 50 per cent, of the 

 sugar in a saccharine solution to the commercially valuable citric 

 acid : or Matruchot's success in germinating the spores of the 

 mushroom, and in sending pure cultures of that valuable agaric 

 into the market — is no argument against the scientific value of 

 the research. There are in agriculture, forestry, and commerce 

 generally, innumerable and important questions for solution, 

 the investigation of which will need all the powers of careful 

 observation, industrious recording, and thoughtful deduction of 

 which a scientific man is capable. But while I emphatically 

 regard these and similar problems as worthy the attention of 

 botanists, and recognise frankly their commercial importance, I 

 want to carefully and distinctly warn all my hearers against 

 supposing that their solution should be attempted simply because 

 they have a commercial value. 



It is because they are so full of promise as scientific problems, 

 that I think it no valid argument against their importance to 

 theoretical science that they have been suggested in practice- 

 In all these matters it seems to me we should recognise that 

 practical men are doing us a service in setting questions, because 

 they set them definitely. In the attempt to solve these problems 

 we may be sure science will gain, and if commerce gains also, 

 so much the better for commerce, and indirectly for us. But 

 that is not the same thing as directly interesting ourselves ii> 

 the commercial value of the answer. This is not our function, 

 and our advice and researches are the more valuable to com- 

 merce the less we are concerned with it. 



It is clear that the magnitude of the subject referred to is far 

 beyond the measure of our purpose to-day, and I shall restrict 

 myself to a short review of some advances in our knowledge of 

 the Fungi made during the last three decades. 



Little more than thirty years ago we knew practically nothing 

 of the life-history of a fungus, nothing of parasitism, of infectious 

 diseases, or even of fermentation, and many botanical ideas 

 now familiar to most educated persons were as yet unborn. Our 

 knowledge of the physiology of nutrition was in its infancy, 

 even the significance of starches and sugars in the green-plant 

 being as yet not understood ; root-hairs and their importance 

 were hardly spoken of ; words like heteroccism, symbiosis, niy- 

 corhiza, &c,, did not exist, or the complex ideas they now con- 

 note were not evolved. When we reflect on these facts, and 

 remember that bacteria were as yet merely curious " animal- 

 culse," that rusts and smuts were generally supposed to be 



