144  v         Asarum  Canadense,  L.  {AVa?c£f8*8.rm- 
ASARUM  CANADENSE,  L.1 
By  Henry  Kraemer. 
The  work  of  the  Systematise  with  both  Phsenogamous  and 
Cryptogamous  plants,  is  affecting  all  departments  of  Botany,  and 
therefore  also  the  pharmacist  and  physician  who  have  to  deal  with 
their  healing  properties.  When  we  consider  that  the  chemist  has 
made  several  hundred  new  remedial  compounds  or  prepara- 
tions, we  may  expect  that  the  botanist  will  also  add,  to  some  extent, 
to  our  materia  medica.  The  chemist  can  apparently  easily  enough 
add  to  or  take  away  from  a  compound  a  radical  or  radicals,  or 
rearrange  the  whole  and  obtain  something  that  is  very  different 
from  what  he  started,  and  to  which  he  may  give  a  new  name.  But 
the  botanist  is  dealing  with  things  that  possess  a  vital  force — and, 
consequently,  is  at  a  disadvantage,  very  frequently,  to  say,  without 
long  and  careful  researches,  whether  he  has  something  new  or  not. 
If  he  goes  to  an  unexplored  realm,  he  expects  to  find  undescribed 
plants.  Some,  however,  prove  to  be  merely  forms,  others  are  dis- 
tinct species.  This  latter  distinction,  however,  it  must  be  said,  can- 
not have  been  proven  until  from  the  seed  similar  forms  of  plants  are 
produced. 
In  more  recent  years  the  familiar  plants  around  us  have  become 
more  carefully  studied.  Students  are  studying  them  as  they  occur 
in  the  field  from  year  to  year.  All  are  beginning  to  recognize  that 
each  individual  shows  some  characteristics  of  its  parents,  but  that, 
under  peculiarities  of  environment,  they  manifest  a  tendency  to 
variation.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  forms  occur  that 
seem  quite  distinct  from  the  parent.  Whether  they  are  so  can  only  be 
proven  by  observing  the  development  from  the  seed  to  seed.  If  this 
apparent  dissimilarity  continues  in  the  offspring  as  an  inherent  and 
hereditary  quality,  then  we  have,  by  reason  of  the  law  of  variation, 
first  a  variety,  and  finally  a  distinct  species.  Until  such  tests  have 
been  made,  it  seems  that  a  new  species  has  not  been  proven  to  exist. 
What  the  various  reactions  and  combustions  are  to  the  chemist, 
this  life  history,  as  perpetuated  in  the  plant  from  the  parent  to  the 
seed  and  subsequent  offspring,  is  to  the  scientific,  systematic  botanist. 
1  Thanks  are  due  the  editor  of  the  Torrey  Botanical  Club  Bulletin  for  the 
loan  of  electrotypes  of  Eugene  P.  Bicknell's  paper  in  the  November,  1897,  issue 
of  that  journal. 
