Lectures on the Physiology of Plants (Classic Reprint)
Description:... Excerpt from Lectures on the Physiology of Plants After the fourth edition of my 'text-book of Botany' (1874) had nearly passed out of print, I received from the publishers, as well as from botanical friends, repeated invitations to prepare a fifth edition. It is, however, an old experience that while one works up with pleasure a second and even a third edition of a comprehensive work, frequent repetition eventually becomes inconvenient or even painful to the author. Having experienced this sufficiently with the fourth edition, I was unable to make up my mind to a fifth. Apart from other circumstances, I was driven to this to an important extent by the progressive development of my scientific convictions. My mode of comprehending important questions of the Physiology of Plants had undergone changes in various directions, particularly in consequence of my compilation of the 'history of Botany'; like others, more or less subject to'the prevailing Opinions of the present, I had held as important matters which I was gradually impelled to recognise as insignificant and tran sitory; higher stand-points and freer prospects opened out to me in the course of time, and the form of my text-book would no longer adapt itself to the advanced view. The artist may touch up his composition here and there with a few strokes of the pencil, or even make greater alterations; but that is not sufficient when the composition itself has ceased to be the expression of his idea. This is the position in which I find myself with respect to my text-book, Since the chief thing in it to me is the composition, the form of the exposition as a whole.
Moreover for several years past the wish had been taking a more and more definite form in my mind, to set forth the most important results of the physiology of plants in such a manner that not only students, but also wider circles, Should be interested in them. That Object, however, is only to be attained by a freer form of exposition, and I believe I have found it in the choice of lectures. It is not only the right but also the duty of any one who lectures, however, to place in the foreground his own mode Of viewing the matter; the audience wish to know and should know how the science as a whole shapes itself in the mind of the lecturer, and it is comparatively unimportant whether others think the same or otherwise.
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