in training students in the modern work and in the conduct of investigations in the fields thus opened. With acclimatisation certain distinctive branches which may be regarded as characteristic have come to the front. These include more especially the study of anatomy in its phylogenetic aspects with which is closely linked that of the palaeozoic fossils, so richly represented in some of our coal-fields as to constitute a virtual monopoly. The present wide-spread revival of interest in palaeobotany is in no small measure attributable to Williamson, who, in spite of discouragement, kept the subject alive till the modern movement was firmly enough established to take up his work. Another productive field has been that of the nuclear cytology of both higher and lower plants, whilst physiology, especially on the chemical side, has attained pre-eminence. On present indications it is to be expected that in the near future physiology will receive much more attention than hitherto, partly as an inevitable reaction from the field of pure structure, and partly because of its fundamental importance in relation to agriculture. Nor is this the only branch that should be greatly stimulated by the forward movement in Agriculture that is now just beginning to be felt. The science of plant breeding, too long neglected by the countrymen of Darwin, has been pursued with much success for a decade, and has already reached the "producing stage" in respect of new and improved races of agricultural plants.
The youngest branch of Botany is Ecology or the study of vegetation in relation to habitat—particularly soil in its widest sense. This department deals with the recognition and distribution of the different types of plant community in relation to topography and the factors—chemical, physical and biologic—which determine this distribution. Ecology has the great merit of taking its followers into the field, where they are confronted with a wide range of problems not hitherto regarded as strictly within the province of the botanist. At the same time it exacts the most critical acquaintance with the minutiae of the taxonomist, so that a new sphere of usefulness is opened to the systematist. Ecology should have a great part to play in helping to break down the frontiers which have too long tended to separate Botany from the other sciences, and the maintenance of which is not in the true interests of the subject.
