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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1049 



phase of botany is urgently demanding at- 

 tention or is being noticeably neglected; 

 nor can it be said that there is not abundant 

 material awaiting the botanist in pretty 

 much any line he may choose. One might, 

 however, urge that our botanists seek out 

 problems for themselves rather than borrow 

 them from our foreign colleagues. There 

 are surely enough original problems await- 

 ing solution at home to keep our botanists 

 fully occupied. The United States with its 

 varied flora and extraordinary range of 

 conditions gives the American botanists a 

 great advantage over their European col- 

 leagues, advantages which, perhaps, have 

 not always been appreciated to their full 

 extent. 



The flora itself, even the vascular plants, 

 is very far from being even fully catalogued 

 and a wide field is open to the trained 

 botanist for investigation of its distribu- 

 tion and relations. These problems of geo- 

 graphical distribution, and of the origins 

 of the different floral elements of our coun- 

 try are full of interest and deserve much 

 more attention than has yet been given 

 them. The man who will write a compen- 

 dious and well-balanced account of the dis- 

 tribution of the plants of the United States 

 will deserve well of his botanical brethren. 



While the vascular plants of this coun- 

 try have received much attention from the 

 systematists and there are numerous ex- 

 cellent manuals dealing with them, the 

 lower plants have not, perhaps, received a 

 corresponding amount of attention. There 

 is still room for handbooks dealing with 

 most of the lower groups of plants, which 

 can be used by the student to identify 

 them. Perhaps more than anything else a 

 manual of the marine algae is needed. 



Passing to another phase of taxonomy, 

 attention may be called to the need for a 

 radical revision of the classification of the 

 seed plants. Perhaps the time is not yet 



ripe for this, but it is abundantly clear 

 that the classification now in use is very 

 far from indicating all the real relations. 

 Among the Angiospermous plants, for in- 

 stance, I believe it will soon be generally 

 admitted that the present division into 

 Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons is a more 

 or less artificial one. It is very necessary 

 that the lower and more generalized families 

 of both Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons 

 should be studied critically with a view to 

 determining the relations of these to the 

 more specialized ones. Any one who has 

 done any practical work in this direction 

 realizes the difficulties of the problem, but 

 I do not believe these difficulties are in- 

 superable. The work calls for much labori- 

 ous research, often ending in negative re- 

 sults; but from my own experience, I be- 

 lieve that finally we shall arrive in this way 

 at a much clearer understanding of the 

 relations existing between the families of 

 both Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons 

 than we now possess, and that we may hope 

 for a final clearing up of the relations of 

 these two groups to each other. 



It is to be hoped that our students of 

 fossil plants by patient searching may 

 finally bring to light material which will 

 do for the Angiospermous plants what has 

 been done by the brilliant researches of the 

 past few years on the geological history 

 of the Pteridophytes and Gymnosperms. 



Just at present there is great interest 

 taken in the question of the so-called ' ' mu- 

 tations ' ' and much inquiry as to their real 

 meaning and their bearing upon the origin 

 of species, one writer — Lotsy — going so far 

 as to claim that all new species originate 

 as hybrids, a hypothesis which few would 

 be willing to accept without many reserva- 

 tions, although there is no question that 

 what are apparently good species have so 

 originated in nature. This study of nat- 

 ural hybrids has been but little pursued in 



