58 What is Botsny?

the teacher; moreover it is decidedly attractive to students, who

natui ally respect a subject which gives them the scientific founda-
tion for this or that operation in agriculture or industry. Among
the many reasons why the applications of botany should not be
neglected in the class room I reckon the most important to be
that it may encourage a student eventually to choose a vocation
in one of these fields. Too often what are really botanists' jobs
are filled by chemists who know very often little or nothing about
botany at all. We need to develop the applied side and our-
selves indicate the scientific foundations of practice, thus gradually
building up a connection with industry in addition to that with
the medical and teaching professions. I would go so far as to
say that a "botanist might do worse than take a practical and
sympathetic interest in some branch of applied work. It will bring
him into touch with extra-academic circles—growers, planters,
foresters, technologists, hobbyists, etc.—with mutual advantage.
We botanists need not only to do our work to the best of our
ability, but also continually to broaden our circle if botany is to
come by its own.
F. W. OLIVER.
yannary, 1919.

WHAT IS BOTANY?
To the Editor O/THE NEW PHYTOLOGIST.
Botany, as the Science of Plants, claims dominion over some
ninety-nine per cent of the living matter on the surface of the earth
and over most of the fossil remains under the surface. In extent
and diversity of interest no other single science can equal it.
As plants alone provide food and energy for the other small frac-
tion of living matter they still form the one essential background to
every human activity. At all times plant existence has loomed
large in the minds of both practical and scientific men. Throughout
the ages students have sat at the feet of those who knew, and the
sages have taught with authority and enthusiasm what they would,
probably all they could, with little refiection or current criticism
as to what they should be teaching.
Now, in this critical hour of a self-conscious age, it has come to
be widely questioned what botany really consists of and what we
ought to teach in centres of learning and education, With
 Reconstruction of E/ementary Botanical Teaching. 60
problem in mind and realising tbe continued growtb of our subject in
deptb and in extent, it bas seemed to me wortb while to run lightly
tbrougb the phases of botany tbat bave successively come to birth
and dominance in the past; and to pursue tbe same idea on beyond
the present. No great pains have been taken to define phases
critically ; tbe pbases bave just been indicated, and any guidance
that emerges comes from tbis general presentation of our science.
Tbe problems, pbases and sections of botany are not really
inberent in vegetation though they are often projected on to it:
they are phases of outlook of tbe buman mind with its changing
vistas and varying needs. Let us then take man's outlook on
plants from the beginning, indicating some nine successive phases
of scientific or sub-scientific enquiry
I. The Phase of Economic Plant Exploitation. Prom tbe
prehistoric beginnings of our race tbere must bave been times of
earnest researcb and experimentation, involving indeed life and
deatb. What countless negative results must have gone to tbe
discovery of the edible in all climates and what delicate experiment-
ation has led to the conclusion that capers should be eaten in bud,
and medlars, alone of all fruit, rotten. A still more sui prising
acbievement is tbe early discovery of nearly all condiments and
spices ; and the uses and abuses of sucb drugs as opium, quinine or
tbe " bellisb oorali." Who started experimental pbysiology by
using animal ordure for vegetable nurture or discovered the
value of leguminous crops for improvement of the soil and its
subsequent returns ?
II. The Phase of the Herbals. In early bistoric times tbe
science of botany centres round the Hortus Saiiitatis and tbe
medicinal uses of plants. Here some of the names of teachers and
text-books survive, but the methods are more like those of the lower
journalism than of science. Slowly however, by selection, an
accepted Materia Medica clarified itself from tbe jumble of alleged
virtues of plants.
III. The Phase of Taxonomy. Graduallysome scientific spirit
of knowledge for its own sake pervaded man's contemplation of
botany, and existing types were grouped and sifted and regrouped
by men wbose life-long devotion to " plants" gave tbem great
unforcnulated insigbt into affinities. Systematic botany was tben tbe
cbief science of botany, with its subsidiary descriptive work on tbe
formsof fiowers, fruits and tbe vegetative parts of plants. Indefati-
gable collectors ransacked the globe for new species as an end in
itself.
60 What is Botany?
IV. The Phase of Comparative Anatomy and Morphology.
Isolated anatomical investigations of the insides of plants of course
began early and morphology grew up with classification but it was
the vitalising theory of evolution which gave a scientific significance
to the comparative aspect of these studies. Plants were not the
chaos of a special creation but an orderly if complex phylogenetic
sequence, to be analysed and, in spite of the imperfection of the
whole record, to be reconstructed by attention to the minute birth-
marks of insignificant structure. Tbe harvest of the main phyla is
now mostly reaped and further study seems likely to proceed on the
principle of diminishing returns. There have been some stirring
pieces of detective work, as the piecing together of the evolution of
the seed from fossilised types; or the discovery that pollen-tube-
fertilisation still bears the class-marks of alternation of
generations.
V. The Phase of Plant Physiology. Stephen Hales, in the
early eighteenth century, was the fir6t to apply to living things a
general scientific " chymio-statical " outlook, and so laid the found-
ations of several chapters of plant physiology. The rest waited for
the discovery of protoplasm, the physical basis of life, and the
realisation tbat what was known of animal functions could, in
essentials, be transferred to plants. Combining with all this the
special botanical studies of photosynthesis and tropisms, Sachs
put together, in a masterly way, the outlines of a coherent physiology
of plants in the middle of the nineteenth century. Since then
physiology has received definite recognition as an indispensable but
rather detached section of the subject. The first English text-book
of physiology appeared in 1886: in general text-books, physiology was
the smallest of the three traditional main divisions.
VI. The Phase of Genetics. The twentieth century has seen
thp rise of several new phases of man's outlook on plants. The
general study of variation and heredity received such an access of
vigour from the Mendelian rediscoveries that it rapidly developed a
body of genetic principles which no biological science can ignore,
and is making the phenomena of evolution assume quite a new
aspect. Apart from the gain in understanding of plants, the power
that genetics has conferred on the botanist has brought honour to
the whole science. Millions of years of Nature's evolution have not
achieved for us so desirable a wheat as the special ceation of
•< Little Joss."
The Phase of Ecology. In a quiet gradual way a new
 Reconstruction of Hlementary Botanical Teaching, 61
section of botany has segregated itself in our midst from devotion
to Nature Study and Vegetation as it sictually exists upon the sur-
face of the earth. Ecology widens the botanical horizon
enormously by insisting upon our adding what may be called the
sociological outlook to the various other ways in which plants have
been regarded. That a new section should thus materialise in
these later days based merely upon phenomena of vegetation which
have been before the eyes of botanists from the beginning, illustrates
the huge content of the science and the human, subjective nature
of the sections into which it is divided. All this certainly adds to
the difficulty of devising for students a general but comprehensive
introduction to botany as a whole.
VIII. The Biology of the Individual. Further I think one may
indicate a group of phenomena, associated with the existence
and development of every plant as a living individual, which is
perhaps now cohering and in process of segregation to form a
definite section of our science. These are essentially matters of life,
but hardly included in physiology in the narrow sense of physiology
of functions and organs: the outlook is upon the plant as an individual
life-history, and its associated problems are brought most vividly
before those who carry on the culture of plants in horto or i)i agro.
Enumeration of a few will suffice to indicate the scope of this
section*; ripeness and viahility of seeds ; dormancy of seeds in soil;
retardation and forcing of vegetative activity ; the laws of growth-
rate and of dry-weight increase ; intensive cultivation, vegetative
growth versus reproductive activity; crop yield and predetermination
of it.'
In the future other phases must arise and acquire a measure
of autonomy: we all await a constructive philosophy of plant-form—
a crystallography of the organised plant—which will interpret such
strange things as the sickle-shaped cells of some green Algae and
the mimicry forms of Caulerpa as well as the problems of poiarsfcy
and regeneration.
The specialised study of one group of plants is not to be
counted as an independent phase from our present point of view.
' It is true that many of these matters are already regarded as part of the
subject of Ecology in its widest sense. Ecology is so comprehensive that it
can be preseated as including the whole of physiology and practically ali the
phenomena of living vegetation, but the history of the growth of the phases of
Botany shows that Physiology as a human outlook has an independent existence
and so also the matters collected in this section have their independent origin
and inspiration in growth and culture of plants, and not in ihe ecoti
outlook.
 02 What is Botany?
The phases that we have here gone throLij»li have all been focussed
upon the normal healthy plant as subject-matter but, as phases
of human outlook, they should, if soundly di'awn up, repeat them-
selves aiul be equally valid even if one set out to exemplify the
whole of botanical science on one group only of plants, as for
instance. Algae or Fungi.
IX. The Lust PItiise. To cast a j»lance much further ahead,
what may we imagine botanical outlook and teaching to be when
every biological phenomenon has been considered to the full both
in its liistorical and functional aspects ?
When our knowledge becomes quantitative and completed
botany may in great part look like a special branch of applied
mathematics. An attempt might then be made to set out tbe life of
the plant in terms of chemical dynamics for the single functioning
unit, in statistical form for aggregates of units, and as correlation-
coefficients for the influence ofthe environment. Meanwhile there
would be an infinite number of biolo<>ical constants to be determined
for different plants.
Though most of us feel relieved to think that this phase is still
inflnitely remote and that the atmosphere of mystery and ignorance
is left to fascinate us, it must be recognised that tbere is already
enough mathematical treatment of biological phenomena to call for
a sound understanding of certain sides of mathematics as pflrt of tbe
equipment of students who hope to go far with work on the living
plant.
Th? only compensation that this last phase could bring would be
that the power of man had increased as greatly as his knowledge,
and that vegetation had become as plastic in his hands as the
inorganic is now.

What light do we gain by thus setting out the science of botany

as a series of shifting phases of development, each of which has its
infancy, its period of growth and dominance when vigorous additions
to knowledge are being made, and then tends to yield diminishing
returns to further research, leaving finally a definite corpus of
truths of structure, function or relationship as a permanent
addition to the Pantheon of Botanical Science.
The steady drift of phases makes it clear that no one of the
federated sections can expect to take precedence of the other sections
on grounds of an absolute nature, which will be valid through all
time. At any epoch there will be some older sections that can claim
 Reconstruction of Elementary Botanical Teaching. 63
the classical beauty of clearly worked out ideas, while newer sections
boast the romantic beauty of the primitive.
Another obvious point is that what is known and taught as
Botany in successive ages shifts. In earlier days advance was
slow and to be a generation behind the times was no great matter.
Now new sections come fast into tlie field, start their own journals
and societies, and materialise at a rate which makes it a considerable
effort for those nurtured in tbe earlier phases to follow. The
collective thought of botanists in council should therefore be given
to laying the foundations of a general course of practicable length
which will serve as an introduction to all modern phases of the
subject. Some material must from time to time be dropped as we
move forward and the teaching term does not expand. The better
establisbed and more clearly worked out a section bas become, the
easier it should be to get the essentials formulated so that repeated
exemplification in detail can be spared. This process has been at
work already and many things taught 20 years ago have faded out.
Mdteria tnedica has gone'; taxonomy has been greatly reduced in
bulk and now the down-turning thumbs of recent contributors seem
to point to comparative morphology as the next section to submit to
the stigma of being called a classic.
With regard to the new accessions to our federation, we must
hold it vitally important that students should, in any general
introduction to botany, be brought deilnitely to realise the existence
cf these new sections and their respective points of view. A diffi-
culty arises in that the new, developing sections are by no means
homologous. While the central attraction and justification of
genetics is a definite discovery—the Mendelian achievement—the
claim of ecology is mucb more a way of looking at plants, the
focussing of scattered existing knowledge and tbe accumulation of
fresh knowledge from new and fruitful points of view. Imparting
to students a conception of ecology is thus a very different task from
that involved in dealing with genetics. The best way of doing these
things must be sought out.
With the new national patronage of science, which chiefiy
means expectation of commercial or political benefit to the state,
one aspect of any section of botany that may not be overlooked is
the possibility it presents of translating knowledge into power.
If this presentation of botany and its diversity in unity is a
' The use of coloured plates for poisonous plants alone, in the earlier
editions of the Bonn text-book, may to the phylogenist appear to be the last
trace of this phase.
 64 What is Botany ?
sound one, it cannot be a tenable position to ciaim that tbe scope
of the general teaching at any scbool of botany is a personal matter
of niinoi importance. Such a position fails when examined either
from the point of view of the reputation of the school 6r tbe
equipment of its students.
Tbe living plant yields place to notbing in its scientific interest
for investigation at the present and in the immediate future ', partly
because of tbe wealtb of problems presented and partly because
tbe scope of experimentation is almost unlimitedj not even
cbecked yet by sentimentality. Wbole ranges of experimental work
exbibit tbe plant as amazingly labile,wbile other types of experiment
bring out equally impressive stability. To correlate all tbis into
a weU-balanced whole is an attractive and imposing objective.
Finally it may be urged, witbout any real paradox, tbat it is
just for students who do not propose to become botanists and
whose sole experience of our science will be one general course of
botany, that it is most important that the course should give a
survey of the whole sweep of aspects here indicated, so that these
students may not pass through our schools without being compelled
to feel respect for the scope of the subject and the problems that lie
before us, as well as satisfaction in acquiring the body of knowled^je
already organised: for while in truth their acquired knowledge will
certainly fade their respect may often remain to our permanent
gain.
P. F. BLACKMAN.
January, 1919.