Botany, or, The modern study of plants / by Marie Stopes.

  • Stopes, Marie Carmichael, 1880-1958.
Date:
1912
    CONTENTS OHAP. PAG* I. INTRODUCTION • • • • « 7 II. MORPHOLOGY . • • « • • 10 m. ANATOMY • a • • • 23 IV. CYTOLOGY • 9 • • • 32 V. PHYSIOLOGY . • • • • • 40 VI. ECOLOGY . • • • • • 50 VII. PALEONTOLOGY • • « • • 58 VIII. PLANT BREEDING . • • • • • 68 IX. PATHOLOGY e • • • 74 X. SYSTEMATIC BOTANY • • • • • 79 XI. CONCLUSION • • • • • 88 SUGGESTED COURSE OF READING • • « 91 INDEX 93
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    CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In our daily life we have no difficulty in distinguishing plants from animals, and we are also seldom in doubt as to the difference between a hfe-containing and an inorganic thing. It is true, of course, that at the ex- treme limits of the series, among the very simplest forms, it is sometimes difficult to separate plants and animals; but in most cases there can be no doubt as to which of the two great classes any thing or any creature belongs. All the life in the world is embraced in one or other of the two great classes of Plants and Animals. Out- wardly they appear so different from each other, but, as we shall see, they have a wonderful unity in the funda- mentals of their structure. The science of the study of life is called Biology, but in these days, when so much detail has been accumulated and stored in books, it is no longer possible for one mind to grasp the whole subject. It has been divided into the two natural divisions of Botany, the study of the plants, and Zoology, the study of animals. It happens that man is an animal, consequently the scientific study of his body should be the work of the
    Zoologists. So much, however, is known about man, and so much more knowledge is eagerly wished for, that the study of this single animal has become a science in itself, of which there are many branches— human physiology, pathology, &c. This has tended to spht up the science of “ Zoology,” and this tendency has been further encouraged by the fact that there are such extraordinary numbers of some animals, e.g., the insects, that their study forms a special science of its own called Entomology. The science of plant hfe is much more united, and Botany includes all the sides of the study of all plants, with the exception, perhaps, of the bacteria which have a science of their own. In many ways this unity in botany is a great advantage, for none of the branches of any science are really independent of each other, and it is impossible to study one—^let us say, for example, the physiology of plants—vdthout a knowledge of the others, and, in this instance, of anatomy and C3dology. Nevertheless, even in botany, and particularly the botany of this century, the various problems in the differ- ent branches of the subject have to be attacked in such different ways, that it is almost impossible for one man to make discoveries in more than one or two restricted fields. In each part of the subject the instruments used, the language employed, and the methods of at- tacking the problems are all so distinct from each other, and so elaborate, that they demand an almost life- long study. This is parallel to the case of music, which is in itself all the harmony of one order of sweet sounds, and yet there are but few musicians who have complete technical control of more than one or two instruments. In the case of science and its branches, the worker has not only to attain personal control of
    his tools, but he has to keep in touch -with all the work and discoveries of the others who are engaged on investi- gations akin to his owti, and this necessitates an amount of reading that rivals the columns of print poured out by the daily press. Every country that possesses um'versities and learned societies is rivalling every other in the production and publication of additions to scientific knowledge. One who is himself adding to this must be aware of what all the others are doing, lest he repeat work already done, or lest he lose the help and inspiration that other work may be to his own. We see, then, in the modern science of botany a philosophic whole, which is only to be attained by the combination of the results of a number of separate lines of work, each of which requires special technical study. In the following chapters the more important of these branches will each be dealt with shortly. In such small compass it will not be possible to give very many facts, but the text-books are full of them ; it will not be possible to go into very abstruse discussions—the learned Transactions are full of them ; but it will, I hope, even in so few words, be possible to illustrate the attitude of the workers in each branch of the study, and to indicate the field in which they labour. Then at the end of the book the reader should be in a position to see for himself how it all hangs together and bears on the one great problem in biology—the evolution of life.