Concluding Note. The preceding pages are arranged to cover a course of 

 12 lectures with associated practical work, as an Introduction to the Somatic 

 Organization of higher Herbaceous Land-plants; the general anatomical and 

 microscopical observations being strung together by elementary ideas on physiology 

 sufficient to give cohesion to the story. 



The notes have been written as schedules to accompany, and not to replace 

 lectures ; it being assumed that the lecturer can add explanatory emendations and 

 enlargements on special points within the time as required. Their defects and 

 omissions are sufficiently obvious to the botanical teacher ; but so long as botanical 

 courses are designed largely by non-botanists, on the law of the minimum, it is 

 interesting to see how much can be done within such limitations; and though much 

 ground may be covered in theoretical lectures, the time (24 hours) allotted for obtain- 

 ing a practical acquaintance with the material is quite inadequate. 



One of the results of a mediaeval University System, originally based on 

 conditions of agriculture, as a phase of Plant-life, in the North Temperate Region, 

 is that the introduction to such elementary knowledge of vegetation, as the response 

 of autotrophic life to the sunshine and temperature of the Northern Summer, has to 

 be taught, in this part of the world, during the darker winter months, when all active 

 vegetation is perennating ; and so the University term begins with the ' Fall of the 

 Leaf. Only in the Long Vacation can plant-life be studied at its optimum ; hence 

 outdoor observation, and experimental work under normal conditions, are necessarily 

 curtailed ; while laboratory investigation of the dead plant, or its pickled parts, takes 

 the place of direct contact with living organism of the type of Helianthus, Zea, and 

 Cucurbita^ then non-existent. So long as the present educational system prevails this 

 sort of botanical work appears as the unavoidable method of introducing the subject ; 

 Botany being naturally the only science affected in this manner, and it being so far 

 nobody's business to change the system. 



General Literature. 



SCOTT, Structural Botany ', Part I. 



BOWER (1919), Botany of the Living Plant. 



STRASBURGER (1912), Text-book of Botany (Eng. Trans.). 



HABERLANDT (1914), Physiological Plant Anatomy: Stomata, p. 447; Vascular 



Bundles, p. 346; Secondary Xylem, p. 659; Mechanical System, p. 150; 



Statocysts, p. 595. 

 PFEFFER (1899), Physiology of Plants (Eng. Trans.), Vol. I; Spectrum, p. 342; 



Aerobic Respiration, p. 518. 

 Josx (1907), Lectures on Plant Physiology (Eng. Trans.); Assimilation, p. 103; 



Transpiration, p. 35; Geotropism, p. 429; Heliotropism, p. 460. 

 RUSSELL (1915), Soil Conditions and Plant Growth. (Monog. Biochem.) 

 DIXON (1914), Transpiration and Ascent of Sap, p. 27. 

 PHILIP (1910), Physical Chemistry ; Osmosis, p. 33 ; Adsorption, p. 219. 

 BAYLISS (1911), The Nature of Enzyme Action. (Monog. Biochem.) 

 ARMSTRONG (1919), The Simple Carbohydrates and the Glucosides. (Monog. Biochem.) 



BOTANIC GARDEN, OXFORD, Nov. 1919. 



27 



