February 6, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



203 



of plants, 'evolved,' as he puts it, 'with a 

 sudden leap,' not as a result of selection 

 or the struggle for existence. It would 

 seem that, for the species reported, the 

 case is well within the line of positive dem- 

 onstration, and that some species, at all 

 events, arise by mutation. It is not clear 

 that all species originate in that way, but 

 meantime the Avhole question of the origin 

 of species is thus coming more and more 

 within the domain of direct observation. 

 Henceforth, positive results are to be at- 

 tained not by guessing, but by cultivation, 

 and it is an inestimable gain to the science 

 that the issue is thus clearly defined. Stu- 

 dents who have been diverted from sys- 

 tematic botany because of its guess-work 

 and its unspeakable nomenclature, have in 

 this new way of species-making a goal 

 worthy of attainment. It is a method that 

 promises definite and final results in a field 

 where hitherto 'judgment' and speculation 

 have unfortunately, though perhaps in- 

 evitably, held sway. 



The closely related field of experimental 

 morphology, altogether imknown in earlier 

 days, is also making a place for itself in 

 botanical literatiTre. The laboratory study 

 of plastic forms has not thus far presented 

 fully satisfactoiy evidence of the perman- 

 ence of forms thus easily evoked, but even 

 if no student of experimental morphology 

 has yet produced a species demonstrably 

 permanent, the accumulation of evidence 

 is pointing more and more clearly to the 

 persistence of character acquired in re- 

 sponse to changes of environment. Thus 

 are we coming, as it seems, to conclude that 

 Lamarck, Darwin and De Vries have all, 

 in their own way, gained some insight into 

 the origin of specific characters, but that 

 nature in the beginning took counsel of 

 none of them, and is still working in 

 devious though consistent ways, producing 

 species at her pleasure, meantime laughing 



at our theories and our narrow range of 

 vision. 



In the matter of life histoi-ies our litera- 

 ture is beginning to show the inevitable 

 breaking with the past. It has always 

 been interesting, no doubt, to know in how 

 many planes a new series of cell walls are 

 formed, and at what angles and with what 

 indication of relationship to this or that 

 'type,' but it is certainly encouraging to 

 note the present tendency to ask how con- 

 stant these phenomena are and what 

 their variations under changed conditions 

 signify. 



The time is too short to speak of the 

 phenomenal development of plant physiol- 

 ogy since the working days of Sachs, which 

 to a few of us seem not long ago, and of 

 plant pathology in which we have had 

 triumphant demonstration of what scien- 

 tific spirit and method in America, now 

 happily no longer unlaiown to European 

 botanists, can accomplish. I hasten to that 

 part of our science that is the last to make 

 for itself a name, though it has long had a 

 place in botanical labor and literature, 

 namely, ecology. It has at the present time 

 a mixed multitude of adherents, and with 

 the double burden of a popular fad and 

 oftentimes the cold shoulder of those who 

 sit in judgment, if there is a survival of the 

 name and the work it stands for, it wiU be 

 because of its own inherent vitality and 

 fitness, not because of the patronage it has 

 received. Let us pass in review the his- 

 tory of this new name and what it stands 

 for. 



It is unnecessary to reproduce or even to 

 condense the erudite etymological discus- 

 sion carried on in Science a few months 

 ago, with which, presumably, you are 

 familiar. The word ecology has come to 

 stay. Personally, I should have preferred 

 bionomics, which has the advantage of in- 

 dicating in its composition that living 



