xii A. F. W. SCHIMPER 



starch-grains exclusively by intussusception a staggering blow from 

 which it never recovered. 



Schimper issued only three purely physiological papers, all 

 devoted in the main to metabolic processes in green leaves, and 

 in particular to the manufacture and conduction of carbohydrates 

 and the assimilation of salts in leaves. Though they contained 

 a number of new facts and ideas, and were admirable models of 

 method, they belonged not to the same rank as the histological 

 work on chromatophores, or as the oecological work. 



It was in his oecological work that Schimper revealed him- 

 self a true genius. Before he commenced this, oecology, so far 

 as the vegetative organs were concerned, could scarcely be said 

 to exist as a science. True it is that Darwin had shed light 

 upon the oecology of climbing and carnivorous plants ; that 

 plants living in deserts or dry spots were recognized as adapted 

 to resist desiccation ; that anatomical and morphological investiga- 

 tion had been made upon selected parasites, saprophytes, aquatic 

 plants, and the like. But the subject did not exist because the 

 methods pursued in the solution of oecological problems were 

 singularly inadequate and often utterly unscientific. To observe 

 a plant with a spotted snake-like stem, or a seed that somewhat 

 resembled an insect, was enough to call into existence theories of 

 mimicry as applied to plants ; to note the air-spaces in aquatic plants 

 was to assume that they were flotation-devices. The subject 

 therefore attracted but few botanists ; for the serious botanists 

 were mainly working in their laboratories or in their herbaria. 



Far-reaching and highly original as Schimper's direct dis- 

 coveries on oecological questions have been, botanical science 

 owes to him a deeper debt for his foundation of a truly scientific 

 and comprehensive method of oecological investioation resultino- in 

 the attraction of able botanists to work at this branch of the 

 subject. Schimper from the first insisted on the employment of 

 methods as strict as those used in solving morphological and 

 physiological problems. And he showed himself the master of 

 oecological method by his critical and coficurrent use of three 

 distinct modes of investigation, namely, of observations on the 

 comparative morphology including histology, on the physiology, 

 and on the geographical distribution of plants. 



