SCIENCE 



NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 4, 1891. 



THE FUTURE OF SYSTEMATIC BOTANY/ 



The address of Vice-President Coulter was a departure 

 from the custom of presenting either an interesting bit of re- 

 search or a summarized view of information concerning some 

 subject. The speaker invited the attention of the section to 

 an ancient department of work. The ancient history of 

 systematic botany is too well known, he said, to need even 

 brief repetition, but the one desire which runs with increas- 

 ing force through it all is to reach eventually a natural sys- 

 tem of classification. At first, from necessity, plants were 

 simply systematically pigeon- holed for future reference, and 

 those who could thus dispose of plants were known as "sys- 

 tematic botanists," an appellation proper enough, but one 

 unfortunately not having sufficiently outgrown its original 

 application. The unfortunate result of this early necessity 

 of so rigidly systematizing facts and thus rendering them 

 accessible was to mal^e the pigeon-holes as permanent as the 

 facts they were intended temporarily to contain. 



As soon as knowledge justified the attempt, " natural sys- 

 tems " of classification began to be proposed ; and one natural 

 arrangement has succeeded another, from that day to this, 

 until in those of to-day we have presented simply what the 

 earliest contained, viz., the expression of man's knowledge 

 ■of affinity, the difference being a slowly diminishing amount 

 of artificial padding. 



Systematic botany, as formerly understood, has probably 

 •done all that it could, unaided, in the natural arrangement 

 of plants. It could indefinitely juggle with sequences and 

 nomenclature, but this is of secondary importance when the 

 real purpose of systematic botany is considered. But it was 

 not left without aid, and a group of new departments was 

 made possible by the microscope and the unexampled prog- 

 ress of powers and manipulation. The study of the cell and 

 of nascent and mature organs, and the recognition of plants 

 as living things that are the resultant of the interplay of in- 

 ternal and external forces, have revivified the ancient mummy 

 ■called botany, and have made it a living thing, capable of 

 endless development. 



Some one has said that " the highest reach of the human 

 mind is a natural system of classification." This simply 

 means that when the results of all departments of botanical 

 work are well in hand, then the systematists will be in a 

 position to put on a sure foundation the structure they have 

 always been planning. The real systematic botany, there- 

 fore, is to sum up and utilize the results of all other depart- 

 ments, and its work is well-nigh all in the future. It is 

 bound to be the last expression of a human thought with 

 reference to plant life, just as it was the first. The systematic 

 botany which deals with genetic characters and recognizes 

 the fact that every plant is a living thing, with a history and 

 all degrees of consanguinity, and that the final form of every 

 natural classification must be to approximate to the order of 

 descent, is in its early infancy. 



* Abstract of an address before the Section of Biology of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, at Washington, D.C., Aug. 

 19-25, 1891, by John M. Coulter, vice-president of the section. 



The position then taken by the speaker was that for the 

 systematists of to day and of the future there must be three 

 distinct lines of work, related to each other in natural se- 

 quence in the order presented, and each turning over its com- 

 pleted product to the next. 



The preliminary phase of systematic botany, the collection 

 and description of plants, is that which most frequently 

 stands for the whole in the popular mind. The speaker ex- 

 plained the disrepute into which it seems to have fallen in 

 certain scientific quarters by the fact that this popular im- 

 pression was resented. He spoke of the inspiring nature of 

 the pursuit after new species, and said that it sometimes be- 

 came almost a mania, or too attractive to the incompetent. 

 But even this ancient kind of work sadly needs improvement. 

 Many things besides the mei-e sporadic collection and record- 

 ing of species should be included as legitimately belonging 

 to this line of research. A plant is too often a text without 

 any context, and is thus robbed of much of its significance. 

 Nothing seems more unsystematic than field-work in system- 

 atic botany. All information that can be obtained in the 

 field concerning species is the province of the collector to 

 procure and of the taxonomist to record. The speaker pro- 

 tested against the search for species as for diamonds, as things 

 solely valuable in themselves apart from their surroundings, 

 and he urged the conversion of collecting trips into biological 

 surveys. He expressed great gratitude to the noble army of 

 self-denying pioneer collectors, but claimed that the time 

 had now come when the same amount of labor could be ex- 

 pended to better advantage, and that a race of field-workers 

 must be trained who shall follow their profession as dis- 

 tinctly and scientifically as the race of topographers. "In 

 this centre of public scientific work in which we have met, 

 devoted to obtaining the largest amount of information in 

 regard to our material possessions, and with means commen- 

 surate with the largest plans, it seems an appropriate thing 

 to urge a thoroughly equipped system of biological surveys. 

 This subject is not a new one here, and steps have already 

 been taken to organize some work of this kind, but I desire 

 to voice the sentiment of this section in commending all that 

 has been done in this direction, and in urging that the or- 

 ganization be made more general and extensive." 



In reference to the work of description, the speaker read 

 an unpublished note of Professor Asa Gray, in which that 

 distinguished botanist lamented the work of those who were 

 incompetent. The speaker also expressed the opinion that 

 the exclusive use of gross organs in the description of higher 

 plants would be given up, and that the more stable, minute 

 characters would prove valuable aids in studying diagnosis. 

 A danger in the use of these minute characters was pointed 

 out, viz., the tendency to use a single set of minute characters 

 too far, and to make the fabric of a whole group conform to 

 it. The character of a species is an extremely composite 

 affair, and it must stand or fall by the sum total of its pecu- 

 liarities and not by a single one. There is nothing that in- 

 volves a broader grasp of facts — the use of an inspiration 

 rather than a rule — than the proper discrimination of spe- 

 cies. 



"I have dwelt thus upon the work of collection and de- 



