Ethel Sargant. 128 
and recording the arrangement of the vascular bundles in a number 
of flowers. This work, which she never published, reveals the birth 
of that flair for detecting morphological clues in the skeletal system 
of the plant, which led, in its maturity, to her theory of the origin 
of Monocotyledons. From 1892-3 she worked under the direction 
of Dr. D. H. Scott at the Jodrell Laboratory, Kew—an experience 
to which she always referred as having been of untold value as a 
training in research in general and in the methods of anatomy in 
particular. It was at Kew that both her cytology and the main 
line of her morphological work came into active existence. Her 
natural capacity for balanced thought developed to an exceptional 
pitch in the congenial atmosphere of the Jodrell Laboratory. This 
capacity—nonetoo common.it must be confessed,among anatomists, 
since it has an unfortunate tendency to atrophy under the influence 
of the microscope—prevented her ever consenting to the divorce of 
structure from function, and in 1897 and 1898 she made a thorough 
study of the literature dealing with the transpiration stream, and 
also carried out a number of elaborate experiments on the ascent of 
sap in trees. She did not publish the results of this work, but it 
gave a sound quality of concreteness to her anatomical conceptions. 
It was perhaps this quality, combined with her constant reference 
to the historical standard in morphology, that led her so profoundly 
to distrust certain developments of the stelar theory, which in her 
view had become so academic as to have lost all touch with 
reality. 
Some work on the seedlings of the Wild Arum, begun in 1895 
in association with Mrs. D. H. Scott,was one of the outcomes of the 
Jodrell Laboratory period. This collaboration was a fortunate 
episode, for Ethel Sargant’s later work was permanently influenced 
by her colleague’s rare capacity for natural history observation. 
This paper served as the starting point for a study of the life 
history of Monocotyledons, more especially their methods of lower¬ 
ing themselves into the soil—a subject to which Ethel Sargant 
returned again and again throughout her life. In 1911 she stayed at 
La Mortola, near Mentone, in order to examine the Monocotyledons in 
the Hanbury garden, and here she met with some examples of con¬ 
tractile roots, an especially notable case being that of one of the 
Iridaceae, Antholvza aethiopica, L. (Pig. 1), which she always 
intended to work out fully. In her incomplete notes on the subject 
she left the followiug statement:—“Clearly Antholvza aethiopica 
produces two kinds of root: one slender, of which there are many 
