Darwinism and Experimentation in Botany. 



99 



suggestive of the brilliant retort of Charles Lamb to a critic, 

 to the effect that he was writing for antiquity, not for posterity 

 Fortunately this reactionary spirit is not strongly represented , 

 and the attitude of attempting to close any door leading to 

 possible realization of research results, or to discredit the use 

 of any method by which new aspects of a subject might be dis 

 closed, has again and again been fitly rebuked by subsequent 

 accomplishment, and never more emphatically than in evolu- 

 tionary studies. 



It is noteworthy that before the awakening in evolutionary 

 studies presaged by the appearance of the "Origin of Species/' 

 and before the masterly efforts of Julius von Sachs in the organ 

 ization of physiological science, Dutrochet was the only physio- 

 logist whose efforts are worthy of mention in the half century 

 previous. Scholars were busily engaged in "interpreting the 

 face of nature," the making of minute descriptions and the spin- 

 ning out of detailed comment thereon, to the entire neglect of 

 attempts to establish the relations between causes and effects 

 in the phenomena of the living world. 



Now simple results of observations, not in sequence, no 

 matter whether concerned with the outline or minutiae of leaf 

 structure, flower detail, vascular anatomy, chromatin structure, 

 chromosome involution, seasonal activity, or geographical dis 

 tribution, do not give, at first hand, results of much appre 

 ciable value; whatever importance may accrue to data thus 

 secured, will be due to the manner in which they may be collo- 

 cated. Properly carried out, this may reveal some forms of 

 relativity and forge the link between cause and effect in certain 

 phases of biology. This may rarely be done effectively, how- 

 ever, and, as long ago recognized by Agassiz, it is peculiarly 

 subject to the danger that comes from the investigator imposing 

 his own ideas upon nature, of making colligations of the most 

 unrelated facts, and of wandering into speculations either un- 

 justifiable or absurd. Inclusive, orderly and corrected results 

 of pure observations in the hands of a master may indeed yield 

 a rich harvest of well grounded generalizations as evinced bv 

 "The Origin of Species," and the derived theory of natural 

 selection. The great conceptions involved were based upon 

 twenty years of continuous labor in which every effort was made 



