No. 544] 



BOTAMCAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 



22f> 



the historical record, which of course is the province of 

 paleobotany; and furthermore, that general conclusions 

 based upon the study of the living flora alone are more 

 apt to be false than true. 



The great problem of paleobotany to-day is the history 

 of angiosperms. Having perfected a weapon in the at- 

 tack upon gymnosperms, it remains for the paleobotanist 

 who is a vascular anatomist to uncover the origin of our 

 greatest group, with its comparatively brief history. 

 The origin is probably recorded in the Mesozoic, and we 

 wish to see the significant structures, and not guess at 

 external form, and much less guess at purely hypothetical 

 connections. To this great task paleobotany is turning. 

 We have had the guesses; and I am confident that pres- 

 ently we shall have the facts. 



II. The Relations of Paleobotany to Botany 

 2. Morphology 

 PROFESSOR EDWARD C. JEFFREY 

 Harvard University 



The morphology of Goethe's metamorphoses, a hun- 

 dred years ago, was entirely external morphology, illum- 

 inating at the time and for many decades later ; but now 

 for over a quarter of a century extinct, except so far as 

 it lives on for descriptive purposes in manuals of sys- 

 tematic botany. It has been replaced by a conception 

 of morphology, based not on external form but on inter- 

 nal structure. The replacement has been slow in this 

 country, where, unfortunately, morphology is still very 

 largely a thing of external threads and patches. The 

 father of plant morphology in its modern form, was, as 

 you all know, Wilhelm Hofmeister, who, over fifty years 

 ago, began to put the subject on a truly evolutionary 

 basis. Like many other men of genius, he was before 

 his time and received little appreciation from his less 

 progressive contemporaries. 



