Economic Botany, Plant Physiology, etc.
At the outset, the Journal, as we have seen, devoted much attention to certain phases of economic botany, and, even down to the present, it has maintained its hold upon the subject. The correspondence of Jerome Nicklès from 1853 to 1867 brought before its readers a vast number of valuable items which would not in any other way have been known to them. And the Journal dealt wisely with the scientific side of agriculture, under the hands of S. W. Johnson and J. H. Gilbert, and others, placing it on its proper basis. This work was supplemented by Norton’s remarkable work in the chemistry of certain plants, the oat, for example, and certain plant-products. In fact it might be possible to construct from the pages of the Journal a fair synopsis of the important principles of agronomy.
Physiology has been represented not only by the studies which had been inaugurated and stimulated by the Darwinian theory, such as the cross-fertilization and the close-fertilization of plants, plant-movements, and the like, but there have been a good many special communications, such as Dandeno on toxicity, Plowman on electrical relations, and ionization, and W. P. Wilson on respiration.
There are many broad philosophical questions which have found an appropriate home in the Journal, such as “The Plant-individual in its relation to the species” (Alexander Braun, 19, 297, 1855; 20, 181, 1855), and “The analogy between the mode of reproduction in plants and the alternation of generations observed in some radiata” (J. D. Dana, 10, 341, 1850). Akin to these are many of the reflections which one finds scattered throughout the pages of the Journal, frequently in minor book notices. As might be expected, some attention has been paid to the very special branch of botany which is strictly called medical. For example, early in its history, the Journal published a long treatise by Dr. William Tully (2, 45, 1820), on the ergot of rye. This is considered from a structural as well as from a medical point of view and is decidedly ahead of the time in which it was written. There are a few references to vegetable poisons, and there is a fascinating account of the effect of the common white ash on the activities of the rattlesnake. In short it may be said that the editor did much towards making the Journal readable as well as strictly scientific.
The list of reviewers who have been permitted to use the pages of the Journal for notices of botanical and allied books in recent years is pretty long. One finds the initials of Wesley R. Coe, George P. Clinton, Arthur L. Dean, Alexander W. Evans, William G. Farlow, George L. Goodale, Arthur H. Graves, Herbert E. Gregory, Lafayette B. Mendel, Leo F. Rettger, Benjamin L. Robinson, George R. Wieland, and others.
At the present time, in the biological sciences, as in every department of thought, there is great specialization, and each specialty demands its own private organ of publication. Naturally this has led to a falling off in the botanical communications to the Journal, but it cannot be forgotten that the history of North American Botany has been largely recorded in its pages.
Notes
184. Scientific Papers of Asa Gray. Selected by Charles Sprague Sargent. Two volumes, Boston, 1889 (see notice in vol. 38, 419, 1889).
185. A notice of Gray’s life and works is given by his life-long friend, J. D. Dana, in the Journal in 1888 (35, 181–203).
Used numbers for footnotes.