Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
.Tan.,  1888. 
Recent  Researches  in  Botany. 
47 
of  you  may  have  noticed  as  evidence  of  this  activity  the  numerous  works 
recently  pubhshed. 
An  excellent  work  on  practical  botany  by  Bower  and  Vines  will  be  found 
iill  that  can  be  desired  for  laboratory  work,  while  students  of  three  or  four 
years  ago  will  remember  having  to  rely  on  Sachs'  "  Botany  "  as  an  advanced 
text-book.  The  different  parts  which  compose  this  work  are  now  published 
separately  with  much  amplification  by  the  Clarendon  Press,  Oxford. 
Only  last  month  a  new  journal  called  Annals  of  Botany  first  saw  the  light, 
showing  that  the  present  publications  were  inadequate  to  meet  the  demand. 
It  specially  deals  with  physiological,  morphological  and  histological  botany, 
And  the  papers  are  copiously  illustrated. 
In  saying  a  few  words,  then,  on  "  E-ecent  Researches  in  Botany,"  the 
difficulty  is  not  want  of  material,  but  rather  the  reverse.  I  have  endeavored, 
therefore,  only  to  select  such  matter  as  may  be  of  general  interest. 
First  of  all  I  would  refer  to  some  "  Notes  and  Queries  on  Gentians,"  by 
Professor  Huxley.  It  may,  perhaps,  surprise  you  to  find  Professor  Huxley 
writing  a  botanical  paper,  but  he  has  written  a  very  valuable  and  interesting 
one,  and  which  is  well  worth  a  little  attention. 
Having  to  spend  some  six  weeks  in  Switzerland  during  August  of  last 
year,  he  was  much  attracted  by  the  Alpine  vegetation,  and  especially  by  the 
gentians;  so  much  so,  that  not  only  did  he  examine  the  few  species  that 
grow  wild  there,  but  on  returning  home  he  devoted  himself  to  a  complete 
review  of  the  whole  natural  order  Gentianacese.  At  the  time  he  was  in 
Switzerland  two  species  were  principally  in  flower,  and  I  was  much  struck 
by  a  statement  he  made,  which  was  that  if  he  gathered  two  or  three  speci- 
mens he  found  no  difficulty  in  giving  their  names,  but  that  if  he  gathered 
fifty,  so  great  was  their  variation,  that  it  was.  almost  impossible  to  state 
definitely  where  one  species  began  and  the  other  ended.  This  I  find  to  be 
one  of  the  chief  difficulties  in  systematic  botany.  In  a  great  many  natural 
orders  the  descriptions  of  the  various  species  have  to  be  drawn  up  so  as  to 
Allow  of  a  certain  range  of  variation,  and  even  then  if  you  have  a  good  sup- 
ply of  specimens  you  are  nearly  sure  to  find  some  one  or  two  that  act  as 
connecting  links  between  the  species. 
Professor  Huxley  has  done  for  the  gentians  what  he  and  other  Darwinian 
zoologists  have  done  for  many  groups  ef  animals.  He  has  worked  at  them 
and  endeavored  to  trace  their  relationship  to  one  another,  and  to  see  how 
far  they  can  be  made  to  conform  to  one  common  type,  just  as  he  showed  in 
a  well-known  paper  that  the  horse,  ass  and  zebra  were  all  descended  from  a 
single  common  miocene  ancestor. 
After  examining  the  flowers  of  a  large  number  of  the  Gentianace£e  he 
found  that  nectaries  were  present,  and  that  the  nectarial  surface  was  some- 
times situated  oil  the  corolla  and  sometimes  at  the  base  of  the  ovary.  This 
then  formed  the  main  point  in  his  system  of  classification. 
The  natural  order  Gentianacefe  is  well  suited  to  a  critical  examination  of 
this  character,  as  it  is  a  well-marked  one,  and  its  limits  are  fairly  well 
•defined.  Arranging,  on  the  one  hand,  the  flowers  of  this  natural  order 
having  nectaries  on  the  corolla,  and  on  the  other  those  having  nectaries  at 
