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Recent Peogbess in Botany 



By John M. Coulter 



Mr. Chairman and Members of the Academy : When I face the Indiana 

 Academy of Science at its twenty-fifth anniversary, I feel more like speak- 

 ing of old times than upon any technical subject. However, perhaps some 

 of these reminiscences may appear at the banquet tonight, and I will re- 

 strict myself just now to the program. 



It is very hard for one who has not lived and worked through the 

 period covered by the history of this Academy to appreciate the changes 

 that have taken place in the science of botany. Those of you who have 

 come into the subject during the last decade can hardly have a full ap- 

 preciation of what you have missed and of what rapid development has 

 taken place. At the time this Academy was being founded, almost all the 

 instruction and investigation in botany was in taxonomy or classification, 

 and that was chiefly restricted to the classification of flowering plants. 

 I shall not weary you by recounting all of the important changes that have 

 taken place since that time, but I wish to point out a few things that have 

 impressed me. 



The first impressive change is the tremendous development and differ- 

 entiation of the subject during the period covered by the history of this 

 Academy. In the background we have still the old historic field of tax- 

 onomy, which is being cultivated with greater zeal than ever. But the 

 first change to note is the great development of the comparatively new 

 science of morphology. In these days morphology has come to mean the 

 structure and evolution of the plant kingdom as a whole, and its develop- 

 ment has been little short of marvelous. Perhaps the first change from 

 the old regime was brought about in this country by the appearance of 

 Bessey's Botany in 1880, and from that date began the development of 

 modern morphology in the United States. 



In connection with the development of morphology there have grown 

 up various expressions of it that have demanded special technique. The 

 first of these to appear was that which is known as cytology. In collect- 

 ing the facts in reference to the cell as a unit of structure, morphologists 

 soon discovered that something must be known about cell structure, and 



