DARWIN AS A NATURALIST: DARWIN'S WORK 

 ON CROSS POLLINATION IN PLANTS 



PROFESSOR WILLIAM TRELEASE 



Washington University 



Charles Darwin is rated as a great man, and there are 

 really not many to-day who would dispute his title to 

 this verdict; hut he did not come easily to it. 



In botany, he never did a thesis on morphology or cytol- 

 ogy, or photosynthesis; he was puzzled rather than de- 

 ranged by nomenclature ; the reason that he provided for 

 the compilation of an index to the names and authorities 

 of all known flowering plants and their countries, in a 

 way, is a confession that he was not a taxonomist; and 

 a really fair all-round doctor's examination, with botany 

 as a major, would have been likely to give him more 

 than the proverbial trouble. He does not seem to have 

 considered himself a botanist, and perhaps has never 

 been admitted to the fraternity formally— though he has 

 opened our eyes to some of the most interesting aspects 

 of plant physiology, baring their secrets in a masterly 

 way with the rough-and-ready direct methods and appa- 

 ratus of an adept. 



His earlier publications were on geology and zoology. 

 My impression is that botanists— aside from the very few 

 who know— looked on him in his lifetime rather as a 

 zoologist. And yet even to-day amusement may be de- 

 rived from reading what has been made public of the 

 debate before the French Academy, when his name was 

 under discussion for membership in the zoological section 

 of that great body and one of the immortals was ready 

 to place a hundred zoologists before him because of their 

 contributions of demonstrable facts to the science. 



The greatness of the man itself long stood in the way 

 of its recognition. He had not classed himself with suffi- 

 131 



