A century of science in America

by Unknown

From “Life and Letters of Charles Darwin” by Francis Darwin.

This paper was communicated in 1859, on the eve of the publication of Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” At a later date he applied the Darwinian theory to the possible solution of the problem, and came to the conclusion that the two floras had a common origin in the Arctic zone, during the Tertiary period, or the Cretaceous which preceded it, and the descendants had made their way down different lines toward the south, the species varying under different climatic conditions, and thus exhibiting similarity but not absolute identity of form. Before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in his Presidential address, in 1872, he used the following language:

“According to these views, as regards plants at least, the adaptation to successive times and changed conditions has been maintained, not by absolute renewals, but by gradual modifications. I, for one, cannot doubt that the present existing species are the lineal successors of those that garnished the earth in the old time before them, and that they were as well adapted to their surroundings then, as those which flourish and bloom around us are to their conditions now. Order and exquisite adaptation did not wait for man’s coming, nor were they ever stereotyped. Organic Nature—by which I mean the system and totality of living things, and their adaptation to each other and to the world—with all its apparent and indeed real stability, should be likened, not to the ocean, which varies only by tidal oscillations from a fixed level to which it is always returning, but rather to a river, so vast that we can neither discern its shores nor reach its sources, whose onward flow is not less actual because too slow to be observed by the ephemeræ which hover over its surface, or are borne upon its bosom.”

Gray’s active interest in the Journal continued until the very end of his life. There were many critical notices from his pen in 1887. His last contribution to its pages was the botanical necrology, which appeared posthumously in volume 35, of the third series (1888). His connection with the Journal covered, therefore, a period of more than a half a century of its life.[^[185]]

The changes that were wrought in botany by the application of Darwinism were far reaching. Attempts were promptly made to reconstruct the system of botanical classification on the basis of descent. The more successful of these endeavors met with welcome, and now form the groundwork of arrangement of families, genera, and species, in the Herbaria in this country, in the manuals of descriptive botany, and in the text-books of higher grade. This overturn did not take place until after Gray’s death, although he foresaw that the revolution was impending.

One of the most obvious changes was that which gave a high degree of prominence in American school treatises to the study of the lower instead of the higher or flowering plants, these latter being treated merely as members in a long series, and with scant consideration. But of late years, there has been a renewed popular interest in the phænogamia, leading to a more thorough investigation of local floras, and also to the examination of the relations of plants to their surroundings. The results of a large part of this technical work are published in strictly botanical periodicals and now-a-days seldom find a place in the pages of a general journal of science.

Cryptogamic Botany in the Journal since 1846.

In glancing rapidly at the First Series it has been seen that a fair share of attention was early paid by the Journal to the flowerless plants. So far as the means and methods of the time permitted, the ferns, mosses, lichens, and the larger algæ and fungi of America were studied assiduously and important results were published, chiefly on the side of systematic botany.

The Second Series comprises the years between 1846 and 1871. In this series one finds that the range of cryptogamic botany is much widened. Besides interesting book notices relative to these plants, there are a good many papers on the larger fungi, on the algæ, and mosses. Here are contributions by Curtis, by Ravenel, by Bailey, and by Sullivant. The lichens are treated of in detail by Tuckerman, and there are some excellent translations by Dr. Engelmann of papers by Alexander Braun. Some of the destructive fungi are considered, as might well be the case in the period of the potato famine. It is in these years that one first finds the name of Daniel Cady Eaton, who later had so much to do with developing an interest in the subject of ferns in this country. He was a frequent contributor of critical notices.