Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/200

186 necessarily confined to those indigenous to a zone fifteen degrees in width, extending across one small continent and half way across another, together with introduced species growing under more or less abnormal conditions in gardens and conservatories. As the science progresses it is becoming more and more apparent that many of the generalizations based upon investigations carried on under such circumstances are incapable of general application, and that before a permanent foundation for the science can be laid, research along all lines must be extended to include the most highly developed forms, in the primitive habitat of the plant kingdom, in the tropics. The principles of the relations of plants and their relations to the animal kingdom may only be attained by the study of undisturbed communities of plants in the natural groupings resultant from the struggle for existence. Here are to be found such rapidity of growth and metabolism that the adaptive possibilities of the organism reach their highest expression.

The centers of botanical activity in Europe are so far removed from a tropical flora that only occasionally does a transatlantic investigator find time and opportunity to extend his researches to include normal tropical forms. To do this he must visit Buitenzorg or some other garden nearly half way round the world.

The center of botanical activity in America has at its very doors a tropical region (in the West Indies), unsurpassed in every feature, which may be reached in four or five days from any important city in the country. The establishment of a laboratory and garden in any convenient locality would not only be of untold value in the general development of botanical science, but it would place within easy reach of the investigator or graduate student in American universities facilities unequaled by that of any other country.

The European botanist would also find a laboratory in the American tropics much more easily accessible than those of the antipodes. The foundation of such an institution would be of direct benefit to the greater number of active botanists, and would go far toward making America the scene of the greatest development of the biology of one of the two great groups of living organisms.

tribute was paid to Darwin at the opening of the English Church Congress in Shrewsbury, the philosopher's birthplace, by the Bishop of Lichfield, presiding, who said that “all members of the Church of Christ owed a great debt of gratitude to Charles Darwin. He had simplified and interpreted, as a true man of science would be anxious to do, the methods which have been pursued by the Great Almighty Creator in his works, and in so doing he had added to the dignity of the conception which they were able to form of Him who made us and all the world.”