RECENT ADVANCES IN THE STUDY OF 

 VASCULAR ANATOMY 1 



I. Vascular Anatomy and the Repeoductive 

 Structures 

 PROFESSOR JOHN M. COULTER 

 ' University of Chicago 



It is perhaps unfortunate that the names applied to 

 the great divisions of botanical investigation shift in 

 their meaning from time to time, but it is inevitable. 

 The content of a subject shifts with the men who put 

 content into it. The morphology of to-day is not the 

 morphology of half a century ago, either in its content 

 or motive; or rather there are several conceptions of 

 morphology existing side by side, some as an inheritance, 

 and others as acquired characters. The older conception 

 of morphology, presented, for example, in the model text- 

 books of Asa Gray, is one thing; and that introduced by 

 the work of Hofmeister, which very slowly made its way 

 into this country, is a very different thing. 



This more recent morphology adds to the old knowl- 

 edge of structures the relation of these structures in a 

 scheme of phylogeny. Its importance lies not so much 

 in the fact that it solves the perennial problem of 

 phylogeny, as in the fact that it calls for the selection 

 and comparison of structures throughout the plant king- 

 dom. It takes the enormous debris of material that has 

 accumulated and sifts it, passing over the trivial, em- 

 phasizing the important, and building up the body of 

 knowledge into a structure that has some form. As 

 knowledge advances, the trivial of yesterday may become 

 the important to-day, and vice versa; but the building of 

 a structure, upon any plan, is work of a higher order 



