Sachs Lectures . 
83 
or otherwise/ It is from this point of view that he wishes to be 
criticised, a wish that we shall not fail to bear in mind, in spite of 
the difficulties which it adds to our task. 
The book is a treatise on Physiology, and the author’s treatment 
of his subject is eminently, we had almost said superabundantly, 
physiological in tone. He seems to have felt the weariness and 
dryness of the older morphological work, for he writes (p. 2), ‘the 
formal morphological contemplation of the organs of the plant 
customary hitherto, has left their physiological relations entirely 
out of account/ We shall be among the first to accept a manner 
of teaching Botany in which as far as possible physiological concep- 
tions are not neglected, yet we cannot but think that in his objection 
to the elder morphology Professor Sachs takes up an exaggerated atti- 
tude, and that he has neglected a possible position, which might have 
been equally serviceable for purposes of exposition, and perhaps more 
logical in itself. The volume begins with a lecture, on ‘ physiological 
organography/ in which a standpoint is developed on which we 
have some remarks to make. The following passages give the 
pith of the matter (p. 2). After pointing out that it is not possible 
* to express organographical ideas clearly and exhaustively by means 
of simple definitions/ he goes on :■ — 
‘ We adopt, therefore, a totally different mode of consideration. Without 
concerning ourselves in any way with definitions, we regard first the various organs 
where they present themselves in the highest perfection in their typical characters 
and then seek to establish which organs, in other regions of the vegetable kingdom, 
present also the same peculiarities more or less modified. In doing this, however, 
we place in the foreground the physiological properties which very often cor- 
respond but little with the relations of outward form which constitute the subject- 
matter of morphology. I believe, however, that this comparative physiological 
method of consideration of the organs apprehends their true nature in a more 
fundamental manner than morphology has hitherto done/ 
Here we have organography regulated by the idea of a type. 
Now it is the essential characteristic of morphology (distinguishing it 
from organography pure and simple) that a type is ever before the eyes 
of the describer. But it is a type distinguished by form, whereas in 
Professor Sachs’s physiological organography the type is an abstraction 
of physiological qualities. In the morphology of our fathers the type 
kept in view was believed to correspond to the plan on which creation 
had proceeded, a point of view necessarily unfruitful since it is 
incapable of development ; but morphology standing on the basis of 
G % 
