yG  Next  Steps  in  Botanical  Science.  {^Tj^^^' 
the  botanist  afield  in  the  future  will  ask  what  the  plants  are  doing 
under  this  or  that  environment.  He  will  not  neglect  the  earlier 
question,  in  fact  he  must  have  that  answered,  but  that  answered 
he  has  still  his  main  question  before  him.  The  work  in  the  field 
laboratories  must  necessarily  be  of  the  kind  now  called  ecological, 
and  so  as  I  see  it  the  botany  of  the  future  will  have  much  more 
of  ecology  than  is  common  to-day. 
Yet  when  we  think  of  these  botanical  stations  whose  laboratories 
are  taken  afield,  as  it  were,  we  must  not  suppose  for  a  moment 
that  the  old-time  laboratories  on  the  university  campus  are  to  be 
abandoned.  Far  from  it.  As  the  work  in  the  field  laboratories  is 
enlarged  there  will  be  still  greater  need  of  the  far  more  exact 
work  that  can  be  done  only  in  laboratories  where  every  factor  can 
be  perfectly  controlled.  There  will  still  be  need,  greater  need  I 
might  say,  for  perfectly  constructed  plant-houses  in  which  we  may 
observe  plants  under  controlled  conditions,  and  where  we  may  in- 
crease or  decrease  this  or  that  factor  at  will.  I  emphasize  this  point 
because  there  are  some  who  prophesy  the  eventual  abandonment 
of  the  precision  laboratory  in  botany,  when  in  fact  everything  points 
to  the  opposite  conclusion. 
Another  kind  of  station,  of  which  we  have  now  only  the  be- 
ginnings, is  one  which  will  carry  the  results  of  plant  breeding 
into  the  domain  of  phylogeny.  Of  this  we  have  now  some  faint 
suggestions,  which  must  grow  into  far  reaching  results  under  the 
direction  of  men  who  know  more  of  the  subject  than  wTe  do  now. 
It  may  be  that  such  stations  will  then,  as  now,  have  a  strong 
economic  bias,  but  this  will  not  so  narrow  them  as  to  exclude  the 
phylogenetic  aspects  of  the  work  they  are  doing.  In  such  lab- 
oratories we  shall  be  able  to  see  how  evolution  has  contributed  to 
the  present  wonderful  diversity  of  form  and  size  and  color  and 
habit  among  related  plants.  Such  laboratories  will  enable  us  to 
answer  the  demand  formerly  so  often  made,  but  less  often  heard 
now,  for  a  demonstration  of  cases  of  actual  evolution.  Although 
such  cases  are  well  known  to  botanists,  their  occurrence  has  hitherto 
not  been  such  as  to  admit  of  easy  citation  for  purposes  of  popular 
demonstration.  So  I  regard  the  breeding  laboratories  of  the  future 
as  welcome  additions  to  the  means  of  demonstration  which  science 
will  possess. 
Unity  of  Action— Allow  me  to  look  once  more  into  that  future 
which  holds  so  much  of  promise  for  botany.    I  am  assured  as  I 
