[wo general evening sessions of popular erest, were held. At one of these was en an illustrated lecture by Dr. R. F. iggs, on the region of Mt. Katmai, Alaska, d the "Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes." e other general interest lecture was by Prosor R. W. Wood, on high power fluoresice and phosphorescence, in connection with ich he performed numerous very ingenious periments and demonstrations dealing with estudy of these phenomena and of ultraolet light.

The opening session, Monday evening, and e two general interest sessions were held Mandel Hall. Attendance on these three enings was as follows:

The increase of scientific knowledge and interest among the general public is one of the most important functions of the association and the one which it has been most difficult to accomplish. The reports in the press vary from year to year, and at Chicago represented a fair average. Several of the more important papers, such as that of Professor Michelson on the application of interference methods to astronomical measurements, were fully report, not only in Chicago but also in New York and other cities. The Science Service definitely organized at Chicago for the wide-spread diffusion of current scientific information will hereafter make possible adequate reports of scientific meetings.

The minutes of the proceedings of the Council, and reports of sections and affiliated societies will be printed in later issues of SCIENCE. Among the matters of general interest transacted at the meetings of the Council are the following:

It was decided that the next meeting of the American Association will be at Toronto, on Tuesday, December 27 to Saturday, December 31, 1921, inclusive. The opening session will be on Tuesday evening. The meeting for 1922-1923 will be held in Boston, and that for 1923-24 will be held in Cincinnati. Then will follow the stated convocation meeting in Washington.

Dr. Burton E. Livingston was reelected permanent secretary and Dr. R. S. Woodward was reelected treasurer, each for a term of four years. Dr. L. O. Howard and Professor Herbert Osborn were elected members of the executive committee.

The Academies of Science of Michigan and of Oklahoma were affiliated with the association.

The collection of portraits and autograph letters of all presidents of the association made by Dr. Marcus Benjamin of the Smithsonian Institution will be purchased under conditions representing a partial gift to the association.

The sum of $5,000 was appropriated for

se addresses have taken various forms; in e cases a review of the achievements in e particular phase of botany; others have ted to the future. It has been my pleasure have heard many of the addresses on these ual occasions for thirty years, and I feel e that they have epitomized the botany the time. As I look back I find there was ch of inspiration in these addresses. We ret that some of the men who sounded the note at these gatherings are no longer with

It is interesting to look back to see what s uppermost in the minds of the speakers these different occasions: N. L. Britton, Botanical Gardens"; J. C. Arthur, "Develment of Vegetable Physiology"; L. M. nderwood, "The Evolution of the Hepaæ"; T. H. Macbride, "The Alamagordo esert "; D. H. Campbell, "The Origin of errestrial Plants"; H. C. Cowles, "Ecoomic Trend of Botany "; B. T. Galloway, Applied Botany Retrospective and Prosective "; William Trelease, "Some Twentieth entury Problems "; Charles R. Barnes, "The rogress and Problems of Plant Physiology"; 7. G. Farlow, "The Conception of Species 3 Affected by Recent Investigations on ungi"; Geo. F. Atkinson, "Experimental orphology"; R. A. Harper, "Some Curent Conceptions of the Germ Plasm"; F. C. ewcomb, "The Scope and Method of State atural History Surveys "; Duncan S. Johnon, "The Evolution of a Botanical Probem"; Geo. P. Clinton, "Botany in Relation o American Agriculture"; H. M. Richards, On the Nature of Response to Chemical timulation"; C. E. Bessey, "The Phyletic dea in Taxonomy "; D. T. MacDougal, Heredity and Environic Forces"; B. L. Robinson, "The Generic Concept in the Classification of Flowering Plants"; A. F. Blakeslee, "Sexuality in Mucors." Dr. Couler in his address as president of the assoiation spoke on "Botany as a Nationai

sset."

In reading these addresses one certainly eels that a wide range of thought and inestigation is covered. When I began to re

HUMAN INTEREST OF BOTANY

Botany should, first of all, have an intensely human interest from the standpoint of our well being. If we recognize this fact then plants should be studied not only for what use they may be to man directly and indirectly, but we must recognize also the cultural value of botany in schools, colleges and universities. Those who have had something to do with the park movement in the United States appreciate, of course, that the general interest in plants is really greater now than ever before. The layman to-day takes intense delight in the great out of doors and he does so for the pleasure he gets out of contact with nature. To such men and women a knowledge of plants becomes an intensely fascinating subject. They are becoming as truly cultured as the men or women who studied Shakespeare or any other of the great writers. This is a new culture which I think means much to the human race and our profession. It develops the highest instincts and elicits highest emotions. Let us not forget that the much despised taxonomic botany has a real place in our life, especially for those who have come to look upon the out of doors as a means to enjoy life.

EARLY ECONOMIC BOTANISTS

Let us take a little retrospective view of the subject. Botany began as an economic subject. Dioscorides, Pliny, Aristotle and Theophrastus were observers who gave to the world what they observed in the plant kingdom, largely on economic plants. Moreover they related in good form what previous writers had observed, with comments on culti

vation. Theophrastus and Pliny both made some ecological observations which were destined to play an important part in investigations of the future.

WHAT THESE MEN OBSERVED

Let us frankly recognize the service these men rendered to increase our knowledge of plants. The plant pathology of these earlier writers was primitive of course and the plant pathologist of to-day would hardly class this early work under that term. This knowledge of the ancients was buried for centuries, in which little attention was given to botany or related subjects, but we may feel sure that during the "Dark Ages" man was intensely interested in the economic phases of botany although we have little written evidence of such interest. Botanists of long ago paid some attention to medical botany. We need only recall that such treatises as Gerard's "Herbal" and later the painstaking work of Hayne, "Die Arzneigewäshse," Rafinesque, "Medical Flora," and many others of the old writers up to the modern work of Millspaugh, "American Medical Plants," Kraemer, "Pharmacognosy," and Luerssen, "Handbuch der Systematischen Botanik," have kept us up with the times.

We know that the Crusaders brought from Asia and eastern Europe medicinal plants, cereals and fruits that made possible the highest type of civilization, for improved plants accompanied a revival of learning. We may be sure that during this epoch the economic phases of plants were studied because of the importance of increasing the food supply. The knowledge gleaned was passed on to the next generation to be of some use to man, and followed by the work of others who for the most part were observers, and our science, it must be said, began in observation. Men like Robert Morison, a close student of Cesalpino, Kasper Bauhin and others, added a little to the knowledge of previous botanists. John Ray and Francis Willoughby became interested in another phase of economic botany; they conducted experiments on the motion of sap in trees. Ray was generous to his prede

cessors like Grew, Jung and Malpighi. T old myth that wheat will degenerate in che probably started with Ray, because he pu lished a statement that Triticum could changed into Lolium. Malpighi, the father microscopical anatomy, gave a fair account the structure of plants, including the duc and the Malpighian cell. Economic plants a ways received special attention.

The English philosopher, Robert Hook, gav a fair account of cork, which he had studie with his improved compound microscope. H investigated the nature of food of plants.

Grew, in his "Anatomy of Plants," ou lines in a masterly way the architecture o plants, interwoven however with the philo sophical and theological prejudices of th time.

Bachman, who was a botanist, physiologis pharmacologist and chemist, appreciated mor phology and taxonomy. He introduced bi nomial nomenclature, and the reason given b him was that a prescription could be writte easier. Think of it, that we as botanists ar indebted to medicine for the naming of plant Bachman refused to recognize cultivated var eties as species. Tournefort had only to go step to recognize genera which he did in splendid way. The last link in the chain the botanists who were influenced by the olde school was Linnæus, who borrowed from h predecessors like Cesalpino, Jung, Bachma and others, but always with fulsome praise the work of his contemporaries and pred

cessors.

Sachs says:

We are astonished to see the long know thoughts of these writers (Bauhin, Cesalpin Jung), which in their own place look importa and incomplete, fashioned by Linnæus into a l ing whole; thus he is at once and in the best ser receptive and productive.

Linnæus thought it important to know species of plants. His "Philosophica Bota ica was a splendid text-book of botar There was nothing else like it for more th a generation, at least there was nothing th equalled it in clearness and completeness. ]

s not an experimenter and cared little for In Germany, under his influence taxonomy generated into mere plant collections, coltors calling themselves taxonomists.

POST-LINNÆAN BOTANY

A new era opened with such men as Jussieu, ertner, DeCandolle, Robert Brown, Adana, Endlicher who knew how to observe and terpret the things they saw. Experimental ›rk with plants became more important; botists began to ask the why about plants; and E. Mariette, one of the first experimental ysicists, studied the salts of plants and the tive forces of attraction and nutrition. Martin Lister directed attention to the ovement of water in plants. Christian 'olff, too, experimented on the nutrition of lants. Stephen Hales in his "Statistical Esays" sought to trace back the phenomena of egetation to mechanico-physical laws, as then nderstood, and studied the water taken in by lants and its exit by the leaves and the fornation of solid substances.

The discovery of oxygen by Priestley was mportant in plant physiology, but he missed he important discovery that light is a vital actor in making plant food. This was left to Tean Ingenhousz, whose experiments showed chat purifying of air goes on in light only. This led him to study the food of plants and the improvement of soils. He discovered that plants use CO2 and under the influence of light make plant food. Jean Senebier was the first to give a clear statement of the process of photosynthesis. We are indebted to the chemist, DeSaussure, for his discoveries, which laid the foundation in an experimental way of the process of food-making in plants. It is a long way from the researches of these pioneers to the work of Boussingault's quantitative methods of studying the food requirements of plants, especially with reference to nitrogen, and the work of Sprengel on ash constituents and Liebig's work, "Chemistry in its Relation to Agriculture and Physiology." These greatly helped to advance plant physiology, as did also the work of Lawes and Gilbert on the mineral constituents of plants and later the

pot culture method of Knop, Sachs, and the work of Lachmann, who in 1858, spoke of the "Vibrionenartige" organisms found in leguminous nodules. Later the work of Schloesing and Muntz, Warrington, Beijerinck, Winogradsky, Hellriegel and Wilfarth and many others made secure for ever a better agricultural practise. Added to the knowledge of the importance of the legume bacteria the important discoveries of Wollny and Berthelot show that bacteria in the soil are the makers of plant food.

Plant physiological work in Europe made rapid strides through the labors of Detmer, Pfeffer, Sachs, Jost, Palladin, Haberlandt and many others. The question of photosynthesis long remained obscure because of insufficient chemical study of the plant pigments. The environmental factors were partially determined by F. B. Blackman and then Willstatter and his coworkers determined the chemistry of chlorophyll, which enabled plant physiologists to better understand the problems of carbon assimilation. Jorgensen and Walter Stiles in their résumé say:

No prophetic vision is needed to foretell development in plant physiology as great as those which were produced by physics and chemistry in engi neering and other technical sciences.

It is refreshing to observe that a soil physicist like Edward Russell in his 66 Soil paper Conditions and Plant Growth," should put on plant physiological problems as fundamental to a study of soils and plant nutrition.

stress

Jung did not entertain any definite idea of the sexuality of plants nor did Grew have a clear conception. Rudolph Camerarius, however, settled the problem by making experiments with maize and mulberry, two economic plants.

We can only marvel at the economic trend of the work of Leewenhoek in the study of linen, who made the discovery of minute organisms, and thus repudiated the theory of abiogenesis. People became curious to study the hitherto unseen world. The use of the microscope in the hands of the curious was