NA TURE 



45. 



THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 1894. 



TROPICAL BOTANIC GARDENS AND 

 THEIR USES. 



Der Botanische Garten " 's Lands Plantentmn " 2 v. 

 Bintenzorq auf Java. Festschrift zur Feier seines 75 

 jahrigen Bestchens. Mit 12 Lichtdruckbildern und 4 

 Planen. 



Etne Botanische Tropetireise, Indomalayische Vegeta- 

 tionsbilder und Reiseskizzeti. \ox\. Prof. Dr. Haber- 

 landt. Mit 51 Abbildungen. 



IF one casts a glance over the more modern botanical 

 literature, it will become evident that special activity 

 is being manifested in that department, which we may 

 term, in accordance with the German usage, the biology 

 of plants. The day has long passed since the emin- 

 ence of a botanist depended on the number of plants 

 —dried or otherwise — which he could recognise at sight. 

 But it is not so long ago since exaggerated importance 

 was attached to a minute and exhaustive knowledge of 

 details of the internal structure of plants, although, for- 

 tunately, the practice did not last long enough, nor did it 

 become sufficiently general, to render the mental burden 

 so heavy as the load which the older systematists had 

 to bear. It is clear, however, that in each instance 

 the science passed, and indeed had inevitably to pass, 

 through a similar phase. The facts must be accumulated 

 before they can be grouped, or before sound general con- 

 clusions can be deduced from them. Of course, the pro- 

 cesses of accumulation and deduction were not severed 

 in point of time ; but the success of the latter process 

 depends largely upon the industry with which the first 

 has been carried out. The practical results have cul- 

 minated in the perception of the meaning of a "natural 

 classification," on the one hand, and in the evolution of 

 a morphology which embraces and welds together the 

 dry facts of pure anatomy into a consistent system, on 

 the other. 



But the morphology of to-day differs widely from that 

 of a quarter of a century ago, both in its breadth and, 

 also, to some extent, in the way in which it deals with 

 its materials. Thanks to the labours of men like Sachs, 

 Schwendener, and others, we are attaining to a broader 

 conception of the principles which underlie and which 

 govern the structure of plants, and we recognise that the 

 most minute details of the organisation may be traced 

 whether ultimately or immediately, back to the responsive 

 action of the protoplasm to the exigencies of its environ- 

 ment. 



And perhaps few causes have been more efficient in pro- 

 moting this change of front from the older formal views, 

 than the extended experience of the manifold adapta. 

 tions exhibited by plants which has been gained as the 

 result of observation and travel in regions where the con- 

 ditions of vegetation differ widely from those which ob- 

 tain in Europe. As one shock after another assails our 

 crystallised notions of the " typical form," we are driven 

 to admit that our carefully drawn up categories may 

 NO. 1272, VOL. 49] 



break down, and become obliterated, or fused beyond 

 all recognition. The one fact which does stand out 

 clearly through all, is the immense capacity for adaptive 

 modification exhibited, not only by vegetation as a whole, 

 but by individual organisms in particular. 



If we find the plant more plastic in structure than we 

 had supposed, the fault lies, not with nature, but in the 

 too rigid formality of our ideas respecting what we had 

 conceived to be typical forms of segmentation, and upon 

 our too scanty recognition of the truth that bodily seg- 

 mentation is after all only an expression of organisation. 

 And as this principle becomes more clearly apprehended, 

 the purely abstract and merely descriptive anatomy grows 

 increasingly obsolete, and gives way to a more intelligent 

 method of dealing with the subject. But if it is now 

 possible for the best workers to seek out the meaning and 

 the bearing of the new facts they discover, the merit 

 of the older observers should not therefore be lost sight 

 of. They laboured, and we have entered into their labours 

 and are reaping the harvest which was not ripe for them 

 to reap, which could not have even been sown, had their 

 patience not been what it was. We can recognise, what 

 they only saw dimly, that convergent and parallel lines 

 of development have played an important part in the 

 evolution of plants ; that identical, or closely similar 

 structural, form may be reached from independent and 

 often widely different starting-points. Moreover, we see 

 in this ultimate form, not the realisation of an ideal 

 Type (which is really an outgrowth of nominalism), but 

 the very practical expression of the fact that these evolu- 

 tionary lines are those which best enable the organism, 

 with its special inherent and inherited disposition, to 

 cope most successfully with the complex difficulties of its 

 environment, and to solve most successfully the problem 

 of its existence. And these conclusions have been 

 arrived at as the result of careful study, not merely of 

 dried specimens and of pickled material, but also by 

 the observation of living plants under their natural 

 conditions of growth. 



There can be no question that it is in the tropics that 

 this last, and by no means least, important branch of a 

 botanical education can be most suitably carried out. 

 Nowhere else are the facts, which a study of the living 

 organism will teach, more forcibly impressed on the mind 

 than in those regions where the infinitely more complex 

 conditions of existence demand a correspondingly greater 

 variety of adaptation than is the case in our colder 

 latitudes. 



And with the establishment of gardens and labora- 

 tories in the tropics, it becomes increasingly easy for 

 every botanist to avail himself of the immense advan- 

 tages of a study of the vegetation of these parts of the 

 world, not under the artificial conditions of stoves and 

 hot-house culture, but under the widely different aspect 

 of fierce mutual competition, in which they maintain 

 their existence in a state of nature. 



The publication of the interesting account of the justly 

 famous garden and botanical station in Java, on the 

 occasion of its seventy-fifth anniversary, comes at a 

 peculiarly favourable juncture ; and it is to be hoped 

 that a perusal of its pages will do much to stimulate 

 many botanists, who as yet lack a personal acquaintance 



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