1895.] Development of Vegetable Physiology. 397 
maturer students and to investigators. The present year, 
completing the third decade since the physiological epoch be- 
gan, has seen the altogether admirable, although brief, ac- 
count of the science by Vines, forming part of his ‘‘Text book 
of Botany” and two llent laboratory manuals, one by Darwin 
and Acton of England, and the other an English adaptation 
by MacDougal of a German work. With these treatises ele- 
mentary instruction is well provided for, and their effect is 
already seen in the rapid introduction of the study as a por- 
tion of botanical instruction in colleges, and even high 
schools, throughout the country. 
hus far only the pedagogical side of the science has been 
brought prominently forward; but what can we say of the re- 
Search side? So far as America is concerned, there is no re- 
search side; the science is equipped and expanded with facts 
and theories from foreign sources. A few papers embodying 
original investigations have been published by American 
teachers, but they were the result of studies carried on in 
German laboratories. A dozen or two papers have, indeed, 
been issued from our own laboratories within the last five years, 
but all of them have been the work of students, mostly in 
Preparation for a degree. America has nothing to show that 
can in any wise compare with the important discoveries made 
and still being made by Francis Darwin in England, De Vries 
in Holland, Wiesner in Austria, or Sachs, Pfeffer, Véchting, 
Frank, and others in Germany. There are ample reasons 
why this state of things need not be considered humiliating, 
and yet it is to be deplored as most unfortunate. 
Let us turn to a hasty examination of some of the problems 
of physiology which await solution. They stand out promi- 
nently in every chapter of the science, and suggest to the sci- 
entific mind most tempting opportunities for original investi- 
gation. The nutrition of plants is so imperfectly understood 
that it may appropriately be said to be a bundle of problems. 
So little do we know of the processes that even what consti- 
tutes the plant’s food is in doubt. We know, for instance, 
that lime and magnesia are taken into the plant, but whether 
they are directly nutritive by becoming part of living mole- 
cules, or whether they serve as aids to nutritive processes, or 
become the means of disposing of waste materials within the 
Organism, cannot be definitely stated. And to a greater or 
Vol. " 
ry Pa ia 
