680 ^ REPORT— 1894. 



the systematic study of plants. The whole teaching of botany was at the first, and 

 continued for long to be, systematic and economic, and it was from this point of 

 view that, the herbalist having become the physician, botany became so essential 

 a branch of medical study. It is noteworthy that as an early practical outcome of 

 the study came tlie establishment of botanic garden?, which, at their institution, 

 were essentially what we would now style experimental stations, and c(mtributed 

 materially to the introduction and distribution of medicinal and economic plants, 

 and to the trial of their products. If they are now in many instances simply 

 appendages of teaching establishments, or mere pleasure-grounds, we at least in 

 Britain are fortimate in possessing an unrivalled institution in the Royal Gardens 

 at Kew, which still maintains, and under its present able Director has enormously 

 developed, the old tradition of botanic gardens as a centre in our vast empire, 

 through which botany renders scientific service to our national progress. 



In Britain, consequent perhaps on our colonial and over-sea possessions, the 

 systematic side of botany continued predominant long after morphological and 

 physiological work had absorbed the attention of the majority of workers and 

 made progress on the Continent. Not that we were wanting in a share of such 

 works, only it was overshadowed by the prevalent taxonomy, which in the hands 

 of many no longer bore that relation to its useful applications which had in the 

 first instance given it birth, and hal become little more than a dry system of 

 nomenclature. 



The reaction of a quarter of a century ago, which we owe to the direct teaching of 

 Sachs and De Bary and the influence of Uarwin, many of us can remember : in it some 

 who are here to-day had a share. Seldom, I think, is a revolution in method and 

 ideas of teaching and study so rapidly brought about as it was in this instance. The 

 morphological and physiological aspect of the subject infused a vitality into the 

 botanical work which it much needed. The biological features of the plant-world 

 replaced technical diagnosis and description as the aim of teachers and workers in 

 this field of science. No weightier illustration of the timeliness of this change 

 could be found than in the attitude of medicine. But a few years ago he would 

 have been rash who would predict that botany would for long continue to be 

 recognised as a part of university training essential to medical students. Its utility 

 as ancillary to materia medica had lost point through the removal of pharmacy 

 from the functions of the physician. But what do we see now ? Not the exclusion 

 of botany from the university curriculum of medical study, but the recognition to 

 such an extent of the fundamental character of the problems of plant-life, that it 

 is now introduced into the requirements of the colleges. 



But if the old taxonomic teaching was stifled by its nomenclature, there is, it 

 seems to me, a similar element of danger in our modern teaching, lest it be 

 strangled by its terminology. The same causes are operative as of old. The 

 same tendency to narrowing of the field of vision, which eventuates in mistaking 

 the name for the thing, is apparent. AVitli the ousting of taxonomy, and as the 

 laboratory replaced the garden and museum, the compound microscope succeeded 

 the hand-lens, and for the paraphernalia of the systematist came the stains, 

 reagents, and apparatus of microscopical and experimental work as the equipment 

 necessary for the study of plants, the inwards rather than the outwards of plants 

 have come to form the bulk of the subject-matter of our teaching, and we are 

 concerned now more with the stone and mortar than with the general architecture 

 and plan of the fabric ; we are inclined to elaborate the minute details of a part at 

 the expense of its I'elation to the whole organism, and discuss the technique of a 

 function more in the light of an illustration of certain chemical and physical 

 changes than as a vital phenomenon of importance to the plant and its surroundings. 

 This mechanical attitude is quite a natural growth. It is a consequence of 

 specialisation, and it is reflected in our research. But it must be counteracted 

 if botany is in the future to be aught else than an academic study, as it was of old 

 an elegant accomplishment. It has come about very mucli because of that want 

 of recognition by botanists, to which I have already referred, of the natural outlets 

 of their study — of theii' failure so far to see the lines through which the subject 

 touches the national life. Modern botany has not yet found in this country its 



