CONTRIBUTION TO THE LIFE HISTORY OF LILIUM 
PHILADELPHICUM.* 
INTRODUCTION. 
JOHN M. COULTER. 
A group of research students, in connection with a general 
study of monocotyledons, selected Lilium Philadelphicum as a 
suitable type for somewhat special study. The end in view was 
to examine those structures so fully described by Guignard for 
L. Martagon, and treated in a supplementary way by subsequent 
investigators of the same plant. Abundant material of the local 
L. Philadelphicum was obtained, and the cultivated Z. “grinum 
was used also for comparison. The numerous preparations of 
thirteen investigators gave unusual opportunity for a broad 
range of observation, so that the facts herein set forth may be 
regarded as fairly established. As to questions of interpretation, 
there may well be diversity of opinion, as the present necessities 
of the case make almost every step in interpretation an inference. 
It is evident that the association of phenomena will suggest 4 
causal relation, whose reality is plainly only an inference. More- 
over, the comparatively obscure structures concerned in cell 
activity are peculiarly open to misinterpretation, both as to 
origin and function. The subject, therefore, is one in which 
dogmatism is singularly inappropriate, and in which every PFO” 
posed causal sequence of events must be regarded asa = 
rather than as an established fact. 
Inasmuch as this work upon Lilium was but supplementary 
to the more formal investigation in which each investigator 
engaged, my original purpose was to organize under a 
oe caption all of the results that seemed worthy. As the work : 
: developed, — certain Lae of it seemed to erent — S 
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