481 



arctic specimens in their anatomical structure are wholly like 

 the temperate ones. The reduction in the rejuvenating shoot, 

 mentioned in the first chapter, makes it precarious to us to 

 stop at such an explanation. The plant being able to adapt 

 its shoot-structure to a short arctic period of growth, it will 

 be unreasonable to allow that no other elements in its or- 

 ganisation were marked by special arctic characters. When 

 the merely anatomical investigation is not capable of giving a 

 direct answ^er to this question, it will be the most natural way 

 to make physiological experiments and use them as a basis 

 for the judgement of the anatomical characters. 



•'Numbers are the metrical feet of science" says Raunkiær, 

 and it can hardly be doubted that the ecological studies will 

 profit by a closer co-operation between physiology and anatomy, 

 especially as these two sciences are not at present foreign to 

 one another. When using in ecology exact physiological expe- 

 riments as a basis, we are led to a wider view on the anatomical 

 structure and to a greater continuity between the single facts 

 of the latter, while it must be regarded as also quite settled, 

 that such experiments will direct attention to several small 

 features, to which no special value has hitherto been ascribed 

 or which have been quite overlooked. 



When I thus refrain from giving details as to the ana- 

 tomical structure in the arctic species of Fingtiicula, it is 

 owing to the reason that for the present I can only state that 

 they in every way agree with the temperate ones, and this I 

 think is not in harmony with the facts ; the fault is to be found, 

 in this case, in the method, hitherto used, and the time for 

 giving a minute judgement of adaptation to the conditions 

 in the inner structure of these plants cannot arrive, before it 

 can be made on a substructure of physiological experiments, 

 performed in the regions, where the said plants are indigenous. 



6—2—1912. ' 



XXXVI. 



