832 REPORT— 1897. 



There are disadvantages, as the various Centralbldtter and special journals 

 show ; for hurried work and feverish contentions for priority are apt to accompany 

 these subdivisions of labour ; and those of us who are most intimately concerned 

 with the teaching of botany will do well to take heed of these signs of our times, 

 and distinguish between the healthy specialisation inevitably due to the sheer 

 weight and magnitude of our subject, and that incident on other movements and 

 arising from other causes. The teaching and training in a university or school 

 need not be narrow because its research-laboratories are famous for special work. 



One powerful cause of modern specialisation is utility. The development of 

 industries like brewing, dyeing, forestry, agriculture, with their special demands 

 on botany, shows one phase ; the progress of bacteriology, palaeontology, pathology, 

 economic and geographical iDotany, all asking special questions, suggests another. 

 In each case men are encouraged to go more and more deeply into the particular 

 problems raised. 



Identification of flowers in Egyptian tombs, of pieces of wood in Roman 

 excavations, the sorting of hay-grasses for analysis, or seeds in the warehouses ; 

 the special classifications of seedlings used by foresters, or of trees in winter, and 

 so on, all aflbrd examples. It is carried far, as witness the immense labour it is 

 found worth while for experts to devote to the microscopic analysis of seeds and 

 fruits liable to adulteration, or to the recognition of the markings in imprints of 

 fossil leaves, or of characters like leaf-scars, bud-scales, lenttcels, and so on, by 

 which trees may be determined even from bits of twigs. 



If we look at the great groups of plants from a broad point of view, it is 

 remarkable that the Fungi and the Plianerogams occupy public attention on quite 

 other grounds than do the Algae, Mosses, and Ferns. Algae are especially a 

 physiologists' group, employed in questions on nutrition, reproduction, and cell- 

 division and growth ; the Bryophyta and Pteridophyta are, on the other haiKl, the 

 domain of the morphologist concerned with academical questions such as the 

 Alternation of Generations and the Evolution of the higher plants. 



Fungi and Phanerogams, while equally or even more employed by specialists 

 in Morphology and Physiology, appeal widely to general interests, and evidently 

 on the gi'ound of utility. Without saying that this enhances the importance of 

 either group, it certainly does induce scientific attention to them. 



I need hardly say that comparisons of the kind I am making, invidious though 

 they may appear, in "no way imply detraction from the highest honour deservedly 

 paid to men who, like Thuret, Schmitz, and Thwaites in the past, and Bornet, 

 VVille, and Klebs in the present, have done and are doing so much to advance our 

 academical knowledge of the Algte ; and Klebs' recent masterpiece of sustained 

 physiological work, indeed, promises to be one of the most fruitful contributions 

 to the study of variation that even this century has produced. Nor must we in 

 England forget Farmer's work on Ascophyllum, and on the nuclei and cell-divisions 

 of Hepatica ; and while Bower and Campbell have laid bare by their indefati- 

 gable labours the histological details of the Mosses and Vascular Cryptogams, and 

 carried the questions of Alternation of Generations and the evolution of these 

 plants so far, that it would almost seem little remains to be done with Hoffmeister's 

 brilliant conception but to ask whither it is leading us ; the genetic relation- 

 ships have become so clear, even to the details, that the recent discovery by Ikeno 

 and Hirase of spermatozoids in the pollen tubes of Cycas and Gimjko almost loses 

 its power of surprising us, because the facts fit in so well with what was already 

 taught us by these and other workers. 



It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of these comparative 

 studies, not only of the recent Vascular Cryptogams, but also of the Fossil 

 Pteridophyta, which, in the hands of Williamson, Scott, and Seward, are yielding 

 at every turn new building stones and explanatory charts of the edifice of Evolu- 

 tion on the lines laid down by Darwin. 



All these matters, however, serve to prove my present contention, that the 

 groups referred to do not much concern the general public ; whereas, on turning to 

 the Fungi and Phanerogams, we find quite a different state of affairs. It is very 

 significant that a group like the Fungi should have attracted so much scientific 



