K.— BOTANY 233 



Absorption of water and nutrients from the soil, assimilation of carbon, 

 water relations of the plant, vegetative development, flowering and fruiting 

 are all problems of agriculture which are essentially physiological, and in 

 many of which the principles of general cell physiology are of importance. 

 Similarly in forestry physiology must play as equally important a part. 

 But besides these more obvious economic applications there are numerous 

 industries in which the principles of general cell physiology are no less 

 fundamental. There are all those industries, ever increasing in number 

 and importance, which are based on some particular plant product, such 

 as cotton, linen, jute, rubber, tea, sugar and tobacco, to mention only a few 

 of the more important. Apart from the growing of the plants themselves, 

 which like any other form of agricultural practice should be based on sound 

 physiological principles, a knowledge of these principles may be equally 

 important in the subsequent treatment of the plant material. In par- 

 ticular a knowledge of cell organisation, the action of enzymes contained 

 in the cell, its behaviour towards various reagents, all aspects of general 

 physiology, are essential. Finally the great food storage industry depends 

 greatly on the application of knowledge of cell physiology. As an ex- 

 ample of this I may refer to pioneer work on the scientific principles of 

 cold storage by Jorgensen and myself carried out some twenty years ago. 

 From a consideration of what was then known of the constitution of the 

 cell we concluded that the satisfactory preservation of certain tissues in 

 the frozen condition depended on rapidly freezing the tissues, a method 

 which was subsequently put into practice in certain branches of the food 

 storage industry. It was indeed encouraging to read in the daily press 

 last December of what was described as the scientific discovery of the 

 week, which turned out to be none other than the rapid freezing method 

 for the preservation of fruit, a method that had been examined and ad- 

 vocated by Jorgensen and myself nearly twenty years previously. This is, 

 of course, only one instance of the bearing of general cell physiology on 

 the subject of food preservation. The effect of the conditions of storage 

 on enzymes and other cell constituents, and on the vitality of different 

 kinds of cells, tissues and organisms are among the problems which a 

 knowledge of the facts and methods of general cell physiology will help 

 to solve. 



With the ever-increasing mass of knowledge in the various branches 

 of botany, an increase which is especially noticeable to-day in those 

 aspects of our subject which are undergoing rapid development, 

 physiology, mycology and genetics with cytology, it is impossible for 

 anyone to be an active worker in more than a relatively very small field of 

 botanical endeavour. We sometimes meet with reference to a mysterious 

 gentleman called the ' general botanist ' who is expert in general botany, 

 as someone distinct from the morphologist, physiologist, mycologist or 

 other worker in a defined field. But in these days, when to make any 

 contribution to knowledge necessitates specialisation, there can indeed 

 be no such person as the expert in ' general botany,' for there is, indeed, 

 no such subject. But in whatever part of our subject our own special 

 interests may lie, we can still appreciate the efforts and aims of workers 

 in other fields, and realise the bearing of work in these fields on our own 



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