July 14, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



35 



one, and is perfectly distinct from any of the ques- 

 tions with which physiology has to do.- 



This position is certainly justified from 

 the standpoint of the paleontologist. For 

 him, for whom nothing but dead material 

 is at hand, there remains nothing else to do 

 than to make known, through careful com- 

 parative study, the structure and relation- 

 ships of those organisms whose remains are 

 available. This is a very important busi- 

 ness. The beautiful results of phytopale- 

 ontological research, such as have been at- 

 tained during the last decade in England 

 and France, have very materially furthered 

 our knowledge of plant forms, and have 

 made to live again before our eyes in a 

 most surprising manner and in the finest 

 details of their structure, types long since 

 vanished from the surface of the earth. 



But does this limitation of morphology 

 to the comparative phylogenetic method 

 which is imposed upon the paleontologist 

 exist also for the morphological study of 

 living plants? 



There are many of the opinion of Scott ; 

 and, indeed, a special 'phylogenetic meth- 

 od,' which is said to be a characteristic of 

 modern morphology, has even been talked 

 of. 



Were this the case, then the only differ- 

 ence between the morphology of the present 

 and the earlier, idealistic morphology 

 would consist in this, that in the place of 

 the general ideas with which this operates, 

 as, e. g., 'type,' 'plan of organization,' etc., 

 there would be found phylogenetic con- 

 ceptions. Such general abstractions are, 

 however, even now difficult to escape, since 

 we can set forth real descent-series only in 

 the fewest instances, and, accordingly, we 

 can not actually point out the stem forms. 

 Yet Darwin himself said : 



We have seen that the memb.ers of the same 

 class, independently of their habits of life, resem- 



^ Address to the botanical section, British Asso- 

 ciation for the Advancement of Science, Liver- 

 pool, 1896. 



ble each other in the general plan of their organi- 

 zation. This resemblance is often expressed by 

 the term ' unity of type ' ; or by saying that the 

 several parts and organs in the different species 

 of the class are homologous. The whole subject 

 is included under the general term of Morphology. 

 This is one of the most interesting departments of 

 natural history, and may almost be said to be its 

 very soul.^ 



The significance of formal morphology 

 can not be more forcibly expressed than it 

 was by Darwin. And yet we see that, in 

 Germany at least, interest in morphological 

 problems has greatly decreased. Morpho- 

 logical treatises have become relatively less 

 numerous; morphological books, even such 

 excellent ones as, e. g., Eichler's 'Bliithen- 

 diagramme,' do not pass through a second 

 edition, while anatomical and physiological 

 works appear repeatedly in new editions; 

 evidently meeting the demands of the bo- 

 tanical public more fully than morpholog- 

 ical works. This may be referred to 

 reasons which lie partly without and partly 

 within morphology itself ; both turn out to 

 be true. Histology, cytology and experi- 

 mental physiology have developed remark- 

 ably; new methods in this field promise 

 new results ; particular lines of work, how- 

 ever, such as descriptive anatomy, are espe- 

 cially favored because the perfection of the 

 methods of research have quite materially 

 lightened the task of working through a 

 vast array of materials, especially for those 

 to whom the other fields of botanical study 

 are more or less unfamiliar. 



But the reasons for the phenomenon 

 which lie within the field of morphology 

 are also clear. Some parts of morphology 

 are well worked out, as, e. g., the doctrine 

 of the more obvious form relations of 

 plants, and the homologies, at least in the 

 large, are determined, although in the mat- 

 ter of detail much remains vague and offers 

 a wide field for exhaustive studies in devel- 

 opment. More and more, however, these 



^'Origin of Species,' 2: 142. 



