SOME PRESENT NEEDS IN SYSTEMATIC BOTANY. 



By L. H. bailey. 



{Read April 23, 191 5.) 



If an editor were to survey the families and genera and species 

 of the vegetable kingdom, he would find himself making compari- 

 sons and drifting to conclusions respecting the character of the sys- 

 tematic work and the worth of various contributions. Many of 

 these conclusions he might not be able to analyze. They might be 

 very much in the nature of impressions, and yet they might be felt 

 so strongly as to be convictions. It is a vast field that his oversight 

 would cover, and the bases of comparisons would be of the most 

 various kinds, yet the convictions in very many cases would be 

 concrete. It may be well to consider for the moment some of these 

 possible convictions, of course in no spirit of captiousness, but to 

 bring other points of view on some of our common problems, even 

 though these points of view may not always be capable of direct 

 application. 



Very likely, his first feeling would be a consciousness of the 

 great variety in the methods of the monographs. The systematic 

 work is rapidly specializing, and the specialists make their own 

 criteria. The result is a marked diversity in the work, which 

 all the efli'orts at standardization do not very much control. Prob- 

 ably, Bentham and Hooker's " Genera Plantarum " is the last of the 

 comprehensive works to be brought to a completion by a single 

 person or by two or three persons working as one. This is suc- 

 ceeded by the editorial work of Engler and Prantl in " Die Natlir- 

 lichen Pflanzenfamilien," and later in more detail by Engler in " Das 

 Pflanzenreich." Floras of countries and regions tend more and 

 more to be constructed editorially, with contributions by specialists. 

 All this results perhaps in closer work in the specialties and the 

 details, but it may lack in coordination and in the balancing of the 

 parts. 



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