272 PRINCIPLES OF PLANT-TERATOLOGY. 



on mendelism, physiology, and ecology), is probably 

 due to the fact that a growing interest and craving is 

 to be found for the study of the living organism as 

 such ; the various forms which it may assume during 

 life, or which it has assumed in the past, seeming to 

 be of less striking interest than the functions which 

 those forms exist to subserve. Hence the abnormal 

 structures, whose function is either unknown, non- 

 utilitarian, or even destructive for the plant concerned, 

 are ignored by the typical botanist of the day, interested 

 mainly, as he is, in the departments above mentioned. 

 Nevertheless, there cannot be a shadow of doubt that, 

 regarding the science of botany as a whole, and from 

 the broadest standpoint, the subject of Comparative 

 Morphology, including that of its sub-section Terato- 

 logy, is every whit as important as any other department 

 of the science, and it was to afford some indication of 

 this that these volumes have been written. 



