THE 
HEW PJlYTOIiOGIST. 
Vol. V., No. io. December 31ST, 1906. 
LECTURES ON THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MOVEMENT 
IN PLANTS . * 1 
By Francis Darwin. 
II.—On Some Questions of Nomenclature and Method. 
I N Botany, as in other sciences, there is a tendency to the multi¬ 
plication of terms. In many cases this is doubtless un- 
advoidable, for as new forms and new facts are discovered they 
must receive names. But too often modern terminology is 
but replacing old names by new and this is, generally speaking, 
a mistake. Then again there is the tendency to give names to 
phenomena which are not of sufficient importance to require 
special designations. But these, such as gamotropic, carpotropic, &c., 
commonly die a natural death, and will not be further referred to. 
With regard to movement we want a terminology framed on a 
wider basis. We cannot dispense with such words as pros-, npo-, 
and dia-geotropism, or as geotaxy for swimming organisms, or geo- 
morphic for the structural changes occurring in response to gravity, 
c.g., the growth of the peg in the Cucurbita seedling. But we also 
need a term which will embrace all these phenomena. Czapek has 
suggested the term gco-cesthesia for all cases of stimulation by the 
force of gravity. This is good in intention, but it is a somewhat 
cumbrous term, and has not as a fact been widely adopted by 
Botanists. Geogenic and Photogenic are occasionally employed; 
there is much to be said for them as being of the type of Pfeffer’s 
terms cctiogenic and autogenic, and it is to be hoped that they will 
come into general use. They do not, however, lend themselves to 
the formation of nouns; geogeny or geogenesis strike one as awkward. 
Recently the term perception has come into use and Botanists, true to 
the scientific tendency to make hybrid words, are using the expression 
1 A Course of Advanced Lectures in Botany given for the Uni¬ 
versity of London at the Chelsea Physic Garden in the 
October term, 1906, 
