PROBLEMS OF PLANT MORPHOLOGY 97 



life also provided with embryonal tissue, and, on the other hand, 

 because in their form they are more exposed to the influence of the 

 outside world than the majority of animals. 



An especially important means in order to the causal study of 

 development has the research into those phenomena proved it- 

 self, which we designate the regeneration of new formations as the 

 result of wounding. The questions, what really takes place when 

 an embryonic cell becomes a permanent cell; the reciprocal influ- 

 ences of separate plant organs, which we call correlation; further, 

 the problem of polarity, stand out with great clearness in the phe- 

 nomena of regeneration. I can, however, at this moment only indi- 

 cate the problems, and cannot point out the steps which have been 

 taken toward their solution. A wide vista spreads out before us. 

 The more must we wonder that of the countless botanical papers 

 which appear each year not more than perhaps a dozen are con- 

 cerned with the problem of development. 



Summing up this brief presentation, it should have been shown 

 that morphology, which originally formed a part of taxonomy, later 

 grew apart from it as an independent discipline. Only when it gives 

 up this separate position will morphology take on new life, for such 

 a position is warranted only historically and not in the facts. 



The earlier morphologists would have said that morphology has 

 as little to do with the physiology as with the anatomy of plants, 

 which latter, at the time when systematic botany was in the ascend- 

 ant, they reckoned also as physiology. For physiology was then 

 everything which was not taxonomy. Nowadays it would be car- 

 rying coals to Newcastle to point out the significance of the cell 

 doctrine for morphology. For the understanding of alternation of 

 generations, of inheritance, and other phenomena fundamentally im- 

 portant to morphology, the doctrine of the cell has become of basic 

 significance. The same is true in a higher degree for the relation 

 between morphology and physiology, for all other tasks of the de- 

 scriptive natural sciences are, after all, only preliminary attempts 

 at orientation, which at length lead to experimental questioning, 

 to physiology. Indeed, one may say that morphology is that which 

 is not yet understood physiologically. The separation of the differ- 

 ent tasks of botany is not in the nature of things proper, but is only 

 a preliminary means at first to orientate ourselves with reference 

 to the maze of phenomena. The barriers between these tasks must, 

 then, in the nature of the case, fall with further progress. I do not 

 wish to deny the value of phylogenetic investigation, but the results 

 which it has brought forth often resemble more the product of 

 creative poetic imagination than that of exact study, i. e., study 

 capable of proof. If the knowledge of the historical development 

 of plant forms hovers before us as an ideal, we shall approach it 



