Theories of Transition from Root to Stem. 13 
THEORIES OF THE ANATOMICAL TRANSITION 
FROM ROOT TO STEM. 
By R. H. Compton. 
[With a Figure in the Text]. 
mHE varieties of national temperament exert on the advancement 
of Science an influence which may be beneficial or the reverse. 
Diversities of scientific outlook, methods and habits of thought 
when brought to bear upon a problem furnish a broad supply of 
material for generalisation. But, on the other hand, the mental 
distinctions of different nations, coinciding as they do with differences 
of language, produce a certain isolation which largely defies inter¬ 
national synthesis : this is evinced by many an original paper or 
text-book, a perusal of which might lead to the conclusion that all 
the work worth mentioning had been done in the author’s own 
country. 
Nowhere is nationality more conspicuous than in the study of 
Plant-Anatomy. In Germany the subject is largely attacked from 
the physiological standpoint. In English-speaking countries the 
phylogenetic interest is paramount, and except where it bears on 
the new science of Ecology, physiological anatomy is somewhat 
neglected, In France and Belgium, however, we are largely without 
the physiological and phylogenetic aims, and anatomy is studied for 
its own sake, as in the early days of the science. France and 
Belgium are the homes of pure anatomy, and are rife with specu¬ 
lation and analysis to which we in England are a trifle indifferent, 
interested as we are rather in the applications of the facts to 
phytogeny. In Seedling Anatomy we continue to use the simple 
mode of description adopted by the early workers, and still speak of 
the Three Types of Transition according to Van Tieghem, to which 
Miss Sargant has added a Fourth Type whose importance appears 
to have been somewhat overestimated : and this although it has 
been long recognised in France that this method of envisaging the 
vascular transition does not adequately represent the facts. From 
our utilitarian phylogenetic point of view we are perhaps justified 
in adopting the simplest conventions possible: but this should not 
blind us to the fact that more recent analytical study has rendered 
these conventions obsolete as descriptions of the actual phenomena. 
The recently published work of Chauveaud marks an important 
advance in the study of seedling anatomy—though not applicable 
to this part of the subject alone,—and it may perhaps be useful at 
