General Introduction 27 



most marked features of the later decades of the century. 

 Not only were the older gardens of Europe and America 

 maintained and developed, but similar stations were 

 opened up in the tropics for purposes of research. The 

 superior opportunities which these institutions afford — in 

 that plants can be kept under constant observation while 

 growing normally under their natural conditions — were at 

 once recognized. To such institutions, now spread almost 

 over the world, we owe much of the knowledge which was 

 obtained of the plants of particular regions, as to not only 

 their scientific interest, but their economic importance. 



The great development of university teaching to which 

 reference has been made, which was the outcome of the 

 Wurzburg influence of the early sixties, was felt almost 

 at once throughout Europe. Nor was it long in spreading 

 over a much wider field. Schools of study started to life 

 in the universities of America, and a new and vigorous 

 race of botanists soon recruited the ranks of the transatlantic 

 systematists. Though much younger than the schools of 

 Europe they showed no lack of vitality, and the develop- 

 ment of botanical research, at any rate in the United 

 States and in Canada, became as vigorous as in the older 

 countries. Alike in the fields of Anatomy, Physiology and 

 Taxonomy, workers appeared who made contributions to 

 science which were of the highest value. 



Still younger was the school which at the end of the 

 century bulked large in Japan. Throughout the whole 

 of our period, students of Japanese nationality were to be 

 -encountered in almost all the laboratories of Europe, and 

 as the years passed on, their return to Tokyo was marked 

 by the establishment of schools of teaching and research 

 of no mean reputation. 



South Africa, too, became in the closing years animated 

 with the same spirit, and developments began which gave 

 great promise of distinction during the coming century. 



