K.— BOTANY. 259 
way absolves the teacher who is responsible for the introduction of 
students to the subject from the duty of displaying it as a whole, and 
this he can only do by making its most vital part, the study of process, 
the key to his exposition, by representing all structure as the result of 
process, and, in its turn, as limiting and directing process, rather than 
by concentrating the etudent’s interest on structure and the comparison 
of structure for its own sake. It seems to me most misleading to 
represent morphology (in the sense in which it has come to be used) and 
physiology as if they were equivalent branches of the subject between 
which the attention of students should be divided. It is only the most 
superficial view that can regard them as equivalent. Structures are the 
end results of processes, and to understand them we must study process 
by observation and experiment. It is unnecessary to remark that 
thorough and accurate acquaintance with facts of structure is inci- 
dentally essential. But to claim the larger portion of the student’s 
time and energy for the work of becoming acquainted with the details 
of structure of all the various groups of plants involves, in my view, 
a very serious misdirection of effort. 
There should be no division of elementary botany into morphology 
and physiology. In advanced work there must, of course, be differ- 
entiation, as there must in research, not into morphology and physio- 
logy, but into a great number of groups of connected phenomena, 
because of the vast number and complicationof the phenomena of the 
plant world. Some minds find their satisfaction in studying structure 
for its own sake, so to speak, and in comparing the structures studied. 
Their research will naturally lie in that direction, and it is certain to 
increase, as it hag in the recent past already vastly increased, our 
knowledge of the detailed facts of structure of the plant kingdom, 
to reveal unsuspected relationships, and to establish probabilities as to 
the lines evolution has followed. But this knowledge in itself, con- 
sidered in relation to the science as a whole, is, and must necessarily 
remain, superficial. Its conclusions even in regard to the lines which 
evolution has followed can at the best never attain to more than a con- 
siderable degree of probability. And its methods and aims can never 
explain structure in any real sense. For that a study of process is 
essential. 
The great development in morphological knowledge, especially of 
what I have called the middle grades of the plant kingdom, and of the 
great groups of fossil plants which belong to these grades, has, as we 
must all recognise, immensely increased our acquaintance with the struc- 
ture of the plant world. It was a natural development of interest in 
the past history of plants, stimulated and directed by the acceptance 
of the doctrine of evolution. Looking back upon the history of botany 
during the past half-century we must be grateful to this movement, 
and proud of the leading and distinguished part our countrymen have 
played in its development. But I cannot think that it has had a wholly 
good influence on the progress of botany, particularly on botanical 
teaching and research in this country. This has remained too long 
dominated by the ideal of tracing phylogeny, has given far too much 
time to the detailed morphology of the different groups which make up 
