1. THE PLACE OF PLANT PHYSIOLOGY IN 

 BOTANICAL EDUCATION. 



The most striking feature of recent educational progress 

 in Botany is the increased attention paid to Plant Physiology; 

 and there is every indication that this advance is permanent, 

 and destined to yet greater enlargement. For this movement 

 there are several good reasons. First, there is a general tend- 

 ency in education towards greater emphasis upon vital or 

 dynamical phenomena. Second, there is everywhere a grow- 

 ing interest in all matters pertaining to life, constituting as 

 they do, useful and illuminating knowledge. Third, experience 

 seems to be showing that the physiological groundwork of a 

 biological education may best be obtained in part from plants, 

 most of whose physiological processes are identical with those 

 of animals, while much more accessible to experimental study. 

 Fourth, physiology is the indispensable basis for advance in 

 that ever-alluring but still rather barren branch of itself, Ecology, 

 which differs (or ought to differ) from pure Physiology only 

 in this, — that it deals with large and conspicuous phenomena. 

 Fifth, the possibility of making discoveries of far-reaching scien- 

 tific importance, or of great practical value to mankind, is vastly 

 greater in physiology than in any other field of botanical inves- 

 tigation. Sixth, all the modern problems of plant culture, — 

 the defeat of disease, the improvement of existent forms, the 

 development of new qualities or races, — are coming more and 

 more to be approached, even from the purely practical side, 

 through the exact knowledge and the characteristic method of 

 Plant Physiology. Hence the subject has assumed great promi- 

 nence in all agricultural and horticultural institutions, — Depart- 

 ments, Experiment Stations, Colleges, — and even in the trial 



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