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STUDIES ON THE PLANT CELL. I. 



BRADLEY MOORE DAVIS. 



INTRODUCTION. 



THIS is the first of a series of papers that will follow one 

 another in the pages of the American Naturalist. They will 

 describe the chief structures in plant cells and the most 

 important events in their life histories, largely from the point of 

 view of the morphologist and student of developmental processes. 

 Research upon the plant cell has entirely outrun the general 

 accounts that may be found in several botanical text books and 

 in certain works of prominent zoologists. We shall attempt to 

 give a general survey of the subject in its present state with 

 references to the most important papers ; but this is not to be an 

 exhaustive account of a literature that is already very large and 

 which can probably be treated far more satisfactorily several 

 years from now when it has passed through the criticism that 

 time will give in a field of very active botanical investigation. 



American botanists have reason to be proud of the achieve- 

 ments of their countrymen in research upon the morphology and 

 physiology of the plant cell, for much of the best work of recent 

 years has come from them. This in itself has been a great stim- 

 ulus to the writer to prepare these brief accounts which he hopes 

 will assis.t the general botanist to a clearer understanding of the 

 progress in this field. They will also serve to contrast the pro- 

 toplasmic activities among plants with those of the animal cell 

 which has been so well treated in several foreign works and in 

 English by Wilson's The Cell in Development and Inheritance. 



The author will feel especially gratified if these papers should 

 help to change an attitude towards investigations on the plant 

 cell that is unfortunately too prevalent among botanists. There 

 is a tendency to regard cell studies as a very special field of 

 botanical research with elaborate technique which the average 



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