228 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XL VI 



bring these two branches of botanical science together. 

 The systematic botanist was accordingly quite safe in 

 ridiculing the insufficiency of the evidence upon which 

 the conclusions of the older paleobotany was founded. 

 With the advent of the anatomical phase of development 

 in both morphology and paleobotany, the two sciences 

 have become united on the basis of common interests and 

 are both enormously strengthened by the union. Morphol- 

 ogy, from being the exponent of a priori philosophical 

 ideas, applied to the question of the evolution of plants, 

 and derived for the most part from the inner conscious- 

 ness rather than from any truly scientific and inductive 

 study of facts, has become the logical fancy-free hand- 

 maiden of evolution. Paleobotanical science, on the other 

 hand, having realized, especially in the case of the older 

 plants, which are naturally of the greatest importance 

 from the evolutionary standpoint, that the external form, 

 even the external form of the reproductive structures, 

 is often very deceptive as to real affinities, has come to 

 regard as most important the much less variable internal 

 organization of extinct plants. Paleobotany is in the 

 position to supply us now, for the first time, with reliable 

 facts regarding the organization and true systematic 

 affinities of the ancient vegetation of the earth, and 

 morphology has reached a condition of maturity where 

 facts are infinitely more important than philosophical 

 fancies, however charmingly expressed. 



It is unfortunately the case that morphology, until 

 comparatively recently, has been quite as unscientific in 

 its methods as the systematic botany with which in the 

 earlier years of its existence as a branch of botanical 

 science it was intimately allied. The recent important 

 change of attitude in plant morphology is practically en- 

 tirely due to extensions in our knowledge of the organiza- 

 tion of extinct plants. Sachs in the second part of his 

 classic "History of Botany," which deals with plant 

 anatomy and similar matters, deplores this unsatisfac- 

 tory condition in the following words: "Owing to the ex- 



