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Plant Science Bulletin archiveIssue: 1969 v15 No 1 Spring
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PLANT SCIENCE BULLETIN |
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ADOLPH HECHT, Editor |
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EDITORIAL BOARD |
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March 1969 Volume 16 |
Number One |
ture. It soon became apparent that, like compost or manure piles, guayule rets underwent self-heating and we were dealing with a small group of then little-known fungi adapted to grow at unusually high temperatures. They grew scarcely at all at room temperature, throve at 45-50 C, and were often active even at 60 C. Out of this came ultimately a full account of thermophilic fungi.? The point of importance here is that among the thousands of fungi in the world a few have become adapted to grow in a habitat where the competition from their fellows is virtually eliminated by high temperature. Not only are the thermophilic fungi able to grow at elevated temperatures, what is more significant they do not grow at temperatures which favor their would-be competitors.
The second example of adaptation was even more striking. In a search for tropical water molds in Costa Rica some ten years ago, I came across the extraordinary phycomycete we have named Aqualinderella f ermentans.s Unlike its close relatives, and for that matter all previously known fungi, A. fermentans showed no growth of plated zoospores in pure culture until it was placed in a chamber containing 4 per cent CO,. Moreover it grew best in an atmosphere of Hs or N_ essentially devoid of oxygen and with 20 per cent CO2.° Whereas the vast majority of fungi are strongly aerobic, A. fermentans is a facultative anaerobe with an obligately fermentative energy metabolism. Here is a fungus specially adapted to grow on submerged fruits in warm stagnant waters where the levels of O2 are so low and the levels of CO2 are so high10 that all the common fungi are eliminated from competition. Once again we find a fungus superbly adapted to live under those very conditions that are inimical to its competitors.
These two examples can serve to illustrate how fungi have evolved to fill countless habitats and environments over the earth's surface. Down through the ages they, like all the other living things—except man—have adjusted to the world in which they live. Now let us turn to man, man who prides himself on his capacity to shape the environment to suit his needs. Here again I have selected two environments, one small and close to home, The University Environment, the other wide and all about us, we may simply call The World Environment. I shall take the University first and ask you to recall the Emperor. For the question before us is whether the environment man has created is a good one or whether he has sold himself a bill of goods? Is the Emperor's suit made of whole cloth or is it shot full of holes? Before you jump to the conclusion that such large questions are outside the purview of a mycologist, let me remind you that mush-rooms and toadstools have always had an intimate connection with man's folklore, his most private affairs, his life and death (Fig. 2), his daily shopping (Fig. 3), his space exploration (Fig. 4), and even his wars (Fig. 5).
The Little Swindle—The University Environment
An environment that is of great personal importance to most of us here is the University. Despite its small size in the general scheme of things, we know that the University carries a tremendous social responsibility and, in the long run, must be the source of information and ideas to expose any swindles in the world environment we will turn
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to last. It is doubly important, therefore, that the University itself be alert to possible hanky-panky within its own walls. Nothing is more demoralizing than intramural swindles and nothing can bring down the house of intellect nore quickly from its key position in society at large.
Despite all that may be said—and a lot has been said
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universities are institutions of learning in which, it students and teachers work objectively together to dis the truth, advance the frontiers of knowledge, and the coming generations of truth seekers. This last is portant. Indeed it is generally conceded to be the ori, function of a university. In an editorial" in 1964 em "The Appropriate Function of a University," Abelson st it very simply: "Obviously it [the university] should primarily for educating the young. This is the one fund which it can uniquely perform and, in the long view, most important." We would also agree that graduate even advanced undergraduate education is integrally sociated with research. The next development, howev can be traced in Garrett Hardin's volume on "Nature a Man's Fate." 12 "As it became generally recognized," . writes, "that an important fraction of the world's researc in pure science was done by academic men, administrate defined research as parr of the job and made productivit in research a criterion for advancement." Furthermore he continues, "the consequences of this meddling hay, been about what one would expect. There is now a ten dency to choose research] projects that are pretty sure ro give quick results and to avoid questions on tabooed subjects." And finally he adds: "As research has become more expensive the academic man has had to develop a talent for begging." The plot thickens considerably in this sequence when we conclude with these pithy comments by Nobel Laureate J. J. Thomson who pointed out that ".. . if you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do not come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible results being obtained. . . . The only thing to do is to pay him for doing something else and give him enough Ieisure to do research for the Iōve of it.""
Now where does this leave us? Ostensibly the some-thing else most of us in universities get paid for is teaching. However, the quality and contribution of a teacher are hard to judge, research is easier to measure or at least seems so, and furthermore the distinction of the University rests upon the distinction of its research so, ipso facto. research becomes the yard-stick for promotion. We have then reached a unique position for as a writer in Science noted recently, we are the only profession that is hired to do one thing—teach—and promoted to do another—research.
As a logical consequence of these several developments, the research pressures in many if not most universities have become heavy, so heavy in fact as to detract from teaching effort. Evidences of a serious imbalance in the educational applecart are all around us. In the editorial by Philip Abelson noted just above" he put the situation unequivocally: "Under the present rules of the game," he says, "any scientist who teaches when he can do research must be unusually public-spirited or blind to his own interest. The result is to demean teaching. How," he asks, "can a professor approach a class with enthusiasm and adequate preparation if he is convinced that education of under-graduates is a secondary function of the university?" In a recent lead editorial in Nature headed "How lnnr ,,,_
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the universities last?" the following statement appeared: "One consequence of a more serious attempt to cater for the real educational needs of students is likely to be that faculty members have less time for their own pursuits—research for example."14 A staff writer in Science, discussing the competitive aspects of faculty recruitment, is
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equally blunt. ". . . faculty members," he says, "should be aware that the picture which increasingly emerges when professors discuss their condition is one of men who are interested in using the universities primarily as bases for their own activities, research, and well-being, and only secondarily as places to teach students. On the other hand, most people outside the university (as well as most students) believe that universities should be primarily teaching institutions."':' In a most entertaining column in the popular press Art Buchwald presents "One Man's View-point on Campus Revolts." "The reason," he quips, "the college students are doing so much demonstrating is that there is no one in the class to teach them anymore." m And, finally, coming home to the fountainhead of student unrest, one of the numerous FSM (Free Speech Movement) -spawned committees at Berkeley concluded last spring ". . . the national and international reputations of both the University and its faculty rest on published re-search, not on teaching . . . furthermore, the individual's professional peers, the colleagues in his discipline through-out the world, are almost exclusively concerned with the individual's research activities and thus pay no heed to his
excursions into the realms of education. ... he is aware that neither his institution nor his colleagues seem to attach much value to teaching."'' They went on to state "We think ... that a 'credibility gap' exists between official statements about the central importance of teaching and the day-to-day operating priorities of the University." Now "credibility gap" is merely the modern way to express doubt about the cloth of the Emperor's new clothes. The implication is clear that someone is tactfully trying to expose a swindle.
The "Publish or Perish" philosophy carried to extremes has a variety of other anti-adaptational effects in the university environment. The struggling young scientist—and not so young too—faced with a need to provide the requisite list of titles come the end of each academic year has resorted to a variety of practices that are at least open to question. A sound block of research, representing a coordinated monographic unit, is purposely fragmented into bits to provide additional titles, each with its overlapping—frequently identically worded—introduction, materials and methods, and bibliography. The series appears as "The path of nitrogen, parts I to XLVIII" (to borrow from my humorous friend, R. Arnold Le Win) .'s Incidentally, each of the 48 parts, assuming it is worth noting, must have a separate index card entry; each, assuming it is worth having, requires a separate reprint request; and each must be housed and kept track of in a reprint col-
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lection, assuming such a collection is now worth the effort. Surely a strange adaptation to an environment already complicated by the information explosion. Whatever James Bonner may say about the bad old days, there was some-thing very satisfying about an afternoon spent in the quiet of the Farlow Library reading a 150-page paper with one title, one author, and one set of conclusions representing perhaps the culmination of five years of work. No wonder we shall need data storage and retrieval machines to keep track of those one-page papers that are upon us.
Then there is the matter of authorship. Aside from the team efforts whose authorship approaches in column inches the text of the paper itself, there are the graduate students. Again in those bad old days, professors of biology at least, if not chemistry, were proud to have their students publish their doctoral theses under their own names. Not so today. A young professor is missing out if he doesn't avail himself of this opportunity for swelling his publication list. Indeed a young colleague made it very clear to me not long ago that the primary purpose of having graduate students was so that they could get the work out for you and keep those publications rolling.
These, then, are the good new days, but sooner or later some lad is going to raise his voice loud and clear and tell us all that the cloth is full of holes and the Emperor looks mighty shoddy. I'm inclined to believe, in fact, that the voices are already being raised. Several first-rate students I have known recently have reacted very negatively to the University environment. No doubt that has something to do with their turning away from science or their search for teaching positions in small out-of-the-way colleges. If we want to weave whole cloth for the University, for Science, for the World in which we live, we'd better keep an ear to the ground for that young fellow who has the simple, direct honesty to tell us when the Emperor has no clothes on.
The Big Swindle—The World Environment
Last we come to the beautiful world around us, the planet Earth. Every one in this room knows what man has done to the good earth. Happily the journals, both technical and popular, and increasing numbers of books are setting the story before people who can read and are interested. Lamont Cole, "Can the world be saved?";" Kingsley Davis, "Population Policy, will current programs succeed?";20 Justice Douglas, "An Inquest on our Lakes and Rivers";2' the Paddocks, "Famine—1975!"22 Secretary Udall, "The Quiet Crisis""—these are but a few of the signs that mankind is beginning to be aware of the massive impact the human species has had upon the planet and the consequences that must be faced. I scarcely need to remind you of Lake Tahoe or Lake Erie, of Silent Spring or the fish kill in the Mississippi, or of the Governor (and erstwhile presidential aspirant!) who says of the great sequoias, "When you have seen one you've seen them all."
My own awareness has grown surely and deeply over the years as a few reminiscences will illustrate. As a mop-pet being brought up in the early 1920's in Manhattan, I often remarked upon the reddish haze that smarted my eyes and obscured the outline of the looming sky-scrapers.'' That, I was told, is "heat haze." What a euphemism! It was a long time later that I realized the heat haze of my childhood was the ugly mantle that would shroud Los Angeles and every major industrial and population center of the developed world. Then there was one of those moments, vividly recalled, when awaiting the change of a traffic signal on Park Avenue, my father, then nearing the end of a career as a physician and Professor of Public Health, deeply committed to protecting human life, turned to me, I thought sadly, and said, "Medicine has brought excessive population upon us; medicine must find some solution." At college I read with wonder and growing concern the first and perhaps most inspired of Paul Sears' volumes, "Deserts on the March, a book that should be required reading for every high school student through-out the world. It was thirty years thereafter that I sailed among the Greek Islands marvelling at their ancient history and the lives men led there 5000 years or more ago. At Knossos, where Sir Arthur Evans recreated the palace—to the dismay of pure archaeology but to my delight—I marked the strapping two-foot wooden beams replicated in brown cement. Where, I asked, were such great trees to be found? Pointing to the scarred, utterly barren slopes of the nearby hills, my informant spoke of forests of great cedars all around the eastern Mediterranean. First I imagined with joy what a glory it must have been, but then my mind's eye moved westward through the Mediterranean, the bare lands of Southern Italy, the dry bleak hills of Spain, even the green fields of jolly England, once covered with mighty oaks. Travelling swiftly I crossed the Atlantic, whipped through the scrubby woods of the eastern seaboard across our great land, and came at last to the redwood forests on the Pacific Coast. "When you've seen one you've seen them all!" That must be what some enterprising Greek admiral had said, some Roman general, some Spanish Don or English Lord (Fig. 6). Evidently, whatever anyone else might say, the progress of each of these great civilizations had depended to a major extent upon a deterioration of the natural environment. Was this the greatest of all swindles? Had the promoters, the developers, the advertisers, the leaders, the advocates of progress sold mankind a bill of goods? Was this whole cloth for the Emperor's new suit or was he marching down the street naked, afraid to recognize the truth?
The answer is not simple. I live in a wooden house, own a gasoline-burning car, fly to Washington ahead of a foul jet-stream, and reside in the world's richest agricultural area where crops are seeded and fertilized by air and sprayed with tons of pest-controlling chemicals. I enjoy all the benefits of civilization. Still, I wonder if it will prove worth it in the long run. I am inclined to believe that the Emperor is wearing little more than a new jockstrap and we should take a sharp look at the motives and principles of the people who are weaving the cloth.
If a man wants to get to the moon has anyone figured
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the cost in terms of irreplaceable resources used and contamination of the environment, let alone the human energy and ingenuity desperately needed elsewhere? When wars are planned and fought, does anyone weigh in the balance the rape of the earth? In his documentary study of British Admiralty records, John Ramsbottom, one-time Keeper of Botany in the British Museum, came to the inescapable conclusion that it cost Britain all her forests to rule the waves for 300 years." No doubt the same was true for Greece and Rome and Spain in bygone days. Later, it was steel and coal and now it is oil and chemicals by the megaton and thousands of drums of radioactive waste hid-den away, out of sight out of mind. It is said that defense demands the testing of atomic bombs and the defoliation of vast areas of tropical forest. Tinbergen stated recently that "Man is the only species that is a mass murderer, the only misfit in his own society."' It must be added that he is the only species busily ruining his own environment and that his propensity for mass murder is one of the major factors in this ruination. Tinbergen also said, "It is an old cultural phenomenon that warriors are both brain-washed and bullied into all-out fighting."' Obviously brainwashing and bullying are not confined to the warriors. Are there any small boys about? We need to know whether the Emperor is in his birthday suit.
Man has sold his fellows another more subtle and very probably much more serious bill of goods. Ever since the very beginning, "Progress" has meant more people. For thousands of years society has encouraged itself to multiply whether for fighters, farmers, laborers, religious supporters, helpers in old age, or just plain John Q. Public with the consumer dollar. Perhaps agriculture was the first major step in the progression and, on the face of it, farming seems like a harmless and natural process. But it was soon overdone and cradles of civilization became desert wastes. Man moved on to new fields but now there is no place to go and there are all these people still encouraging themselves to multiply. By dint of agricultural and chemical technocracy that threatens the balance of nature as never before we are proudly extracting the ultimate calory, ingeniously making a bit more protein, talking big about making food in factories. But the chips are down, the game is up, there are too many people. Yet even today, with the world's population doubling every 30 years and rates of population increase rising even faster than the most extreme predictions, why are whole nations, whole religions, and whole societies opposed to birth control, often precisely where control is most obviously needed? Man's failure to recognize and act upon this problem may be his undoing, and this failure has to be chalked up to the biggest swindle, antiadaptation if you will, of all time. And this time a small boy won't do the job. We need a big man with a mighty voice to tell the world the Emperor is stark naked. For this purpose we need the very forces that have perpetrated the swindle. Consider what could be done by a world education campaign organized by American advertising, backed by the Russian propaganda mill, approved by the Vatican, and supported by the $100 billion a year that mankind puts into armaments and defense! Which means more to us, selling obsolete arms to Latin America or selling birth control? We've got to get that cloth woven and put some honest--to-god clothes on the Emperor's back. We must begin by recognizing and accepting a realistic appraisal of the present situation. Kingsley Davis and the Paddocks urge us to quit kidding ourselves and face up to the swindle. If men stop multiplying they might learn to stop fighting and then they might have time to discover how to adapt to their natural environment as well as the molds have done.
Conclusion
What we have been talking about is man's progress, whether he has been moving onward and upward or whether
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his span on earth is more accurately depicted in Figure 7. Obviously Botany has a great deal to do with this, and it is up to us to see that man's efforts are not devoted exclusively to explosive chemistry (Fig. 8). I urge you, therefore, to cast your eyes upon the Emperor's New Clothes" s and ask yourselves again how we can weave whole cloth.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To those students and friends who lent support to this venture, I extend warm thanks. The generous permission of artists, authors, and publishers to reproduce their works here is also gratefully acknowledged.
NOTES
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Abbreviated version of the address of the retiring President of the Botanical Society of America, presented at the Society's annual banquet, September 5, 1968, at Columbus, Ohio.
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BRAGG, L. 1966. The art of talking about science. Science 154: 1613-1616. Quoted, by permission of the author and publisher, from p. 1614 of the 30 Dec. 1966 issue. Copy-right 1966 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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WESTON, W. H. 1941. Lower plants and higher education. Amer. Biol. Teacher 3: 189-195.
i. FULLER, H. J. 1951. The emperor's new clothes, or prius dementat. Sci. Monthly 72: 32-41.
5. The interested reader will find illustrations of the emperor on parade in the various editions of Andersen's fairy talcs. An especially delightful colored rendition, used as the first slide in this talk, appears on page 215 in: Andersen, H. 1911. Stories from Hans Andersen with illustrations by Edmund Dulac, 258 p. Hodder and Stoughton, New York.
The caption for this illustration, on page 214, goes as follows: "Then the Emperor walked along in the procession under the gorgeous canopy, and everybody in the streets and at the windows exclaimed, `How beautiful the Emperor's new clothes are!"'
6. ALLEN. P. J. AND RALPH EMERSON. 1949. Guayule rubber. Microbiological improvement by shrub resting. lnd. Eng. Chem. 41: 346-365.
7. COONEY, D. G., AND RALPH EMERSON. 1964. Thermophilic fungi, an account of their biology, activities, and classification, 200 p. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco.
8. EMERSON, RALPH. AND W. H. WESTON. 1967. Aqualinderella fernzentans gen. et sp. nov., a phycomycete adapted to stagnant waters. I. Morphology and occurrence in nature. Amer. J. Bot. 54: 702-719.
9. EMERSON, RALPH, AND A. A. HELD. 1969. Agvalinder•ella f ermentans gen. et sp. nov., a phycomycete adapted to stagnant waters. II. Isolation, cultural characteristics, and gas relations. Amer. J. Bot. 56: (in press).
10. A. fermentans has been found by Bandoni (see Bandoni, R. J., and J. D. Parsons. 1966. Some aquatic phycomycetes from Pine Hills. Trans. Ill. State Acad. Sci. 59: 91-94) in swamps in southern Illinois where Parsons (personal communication) reports oxygen levels virtually zero and carbon dioxide up to 3000 gM/liter in the summer months under a dense mat of floating vegetation.
11. ABELSON, P. H. 1964. The appropriate function of a university. Science 143: 11. Quoted, by permission of the author and publisher, from p. 11 of the 3 Jan. 1964 issue. Copyright 1964 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
12. HARDIN, GARRETT. 1959. Nature and man's fate, 387 p. Rinehart & Co., Inc., New York. Quoted, by permismission of the author, from pp. 344 and 345.
13. RAYLEIGH, R. J. S. 1943. The life of Sir J. J. Thomson, 309 p. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Quoted, by permission of Lord Rayleigh and the publisher, from p. 199.
14. Editor. Nature Magazine. 1968. How long can the uni versities last? Nature 218: 997. Quoted, by permission of the author and publisher.
15. NELSON, BRYCE. 1968. Harvard faculty: how can you keep 'em after they've seen California? Science 160: 977-978. Quoted, by permission of the author and publisher, from p. 978 of the 31 May 1968 issue. Copyright 1968 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
16. BUCHWALD, ART. 1967? One man's viewpoint on cam-pus revolts. Washington Post. Quoted, by permission of the author. (Reproduced in full in University Bulletin, University of California, 15(33): 146, April 10, 1967.)
17. University of California. 1968. Report of the committee on teaching. Notice, meeting of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate, June 3, 1968, pp. 7-13. Quoted, by permission of Professor Herma H. Kay. Chairman of the Committee, from pp. 7, 8, and 9.
18. LE WIN. R. ARNOLD. 1963. Logarithmic and arythmic expression of a physiological function. In, Baker, R. A. [ed.] A stress analysis of a strapless evening gown. Prentice-I-fall, Inc., N.J. Following arc selected references quoted, by permission of Dr. Ralph A. Lewin. from p. 147.
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Juan, Don; Smith, Phillis; Hatsui, Irene; Fullmann, Her-
mione; Myschawa, Jane; Blz, Bella; Smith, Phyllis; and
Oginski, Thelma. Trapstocachuamycin, a new antibiotic.
J. Biol. Chem., 67: 1056-1066, 1951.
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Melville, H. The path of nitrogen. XLVIII. N''_ fixation and N'I-ls . CO • N"H, production in Chilean onions. Arch. Biochem. Biophys., 40: 15-18, 1956.
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Melville, H.. Washington, G., Lincoln, A., and Cadillac, de V. The path of nitrogen. CXL. Absence of demonstrable N''I-h. • CO • N"H, production and N''sfixation in Spanish onions. Arch. Biochem. Biophys.. 41: 156-160, 1957.
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Shadrach, C., Meshach, H., and Abednego, H. and C. An anaerobic heat resistant monoflagellate ornirhine producing sulfur non-purple bacterium isolated from the rectum of a goat. J. Bact., 70: 1-11, 1944.
19. COLE, L. C. 1968. .Can the world be saved? BioSci. 18: 679-684.
20. DAvis, KINGSLEY. 1967. Population policy: will current programs succeed? Science 158: 730-739.
21. DOUGLAS, W. O. 1968. An inquest on our lakes and rivers. Playboy 15(6) : 96-98 and 177-181.
22. PADDOCK, WILLIAM. AND PAUL PADDOCK. 1967. Famine -1975! 286 p. Little Brown. Boston.
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UDALL, S. L. 1963. The quiet crisis. 312 p. Holt. Rine-hart and Winston, New York.
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GRAHAM, FRANK, JR. 1968. The breath of death. Audubon (magazine) 70(4) : 48-58. On p. 48 (July/August issue) is a color picture much as I remember the same scene 50 years ago.
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SEARS, P. B. 1959. Deserts on the march [3d. edn., rev.], 192 p. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. (First published in 1935.)
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RAMSBOTTOM, JOHN. 1937. Dry rot in ships. Essex Naturalist 25: 231-267.
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TINBERGEN, N. 1968. On war and peace in animals and man. Science 160: 1411-1418. Quoted, by permission of the author and publisher, from pp. 1412 and 1415 of the 28 June 1968 issue. Copyright 1968 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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As a further guide to the complexities of this whole issue, the reader will find food for thought in a magnificent modern rendition of the Emperor. used as the last slide of this talk, if he refers to Playboy for April 1968 (Vol. 15, No. 4. p. 83). The caption reads: "I don't think much of the Emperor's new clothes, but did you get a load of the Empress?"
NOTES FROM THE EDITOR
As most of you know, the XI International Botanical Congress will be held at Seattle, Washington beginning August 24, 1969. The week before this Congress there will be two other science meetings at which botanists may have an opportunity to present papers and participate in the sessions: the Pacific Division of the A.A.A.S. will meet at Washington State University, Pullman, and the A.I.B.S. will hold its sessions during this same period at the University of Vermont, Burlington.
The American Society of Horticultural Science (national organization), the Western Section of the American Society of Plant Physiologists, and the Pacific Section of the Botanical Society of America are among the groups that are planning sessions at the Pacific Division meetings in Pullman. A Pre-Congress Conference on Pollen and Pollen Physiology is also being organized. A.A.A.S. members in the area of the Pacific Division will soon receive copies of the Preliminary Program for these meetings; others may obtain copies by writing to Dr. Robert C. Miller, Secretary, Pacific Division, A.A.A.S., California Academy of Sciences, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California, 94118.
An A.I.B.S. Special Plant Science Session will be held as part of the A.I.B.S. annual meeting at the University of Vermont. Botanists who wish to present a paper are invited to send a title and an abstract (not to exceed 300 words) to the organizing committee: Plant Science Session, Marsh Life Sciences Building, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont 05401. Titles and abstracts must be mailed before April 1, 1969.
We note with regret the passing of two well-known emeritus botanists, formerly associated with the University of Michigan. Emeritus Professor Edwin B. Mains, former Director of the Herbarium, University of Michigan, died on December 23, 1968 at the age of 78. Emeritus Professor Felix G. Gustafson, discoverer of the induction of parthenocarpy through hormone treatment, died on January 13, 1969 at the age of 80.
NEWS AND NOTES
New York Botanical Garden Announces Title Changes
The Board of Managers of The New York Botanical Gar-den has approved the elevation in title of first echelon administrative officers. These new titles not only reflect the greater responsibilities imposed by the long-range development program, they also express more clearly the duties and status of each officer.
President Charles B. Harding has announced the five changes in title:
Dr. William C. Steere, from Director to Executive Director.
Dennis A. Brown, from Assistant Director (Horticulture and Maintenance) to Director of Horticulture.
Carl Dobrin, from Assistant Director (Development) to Director of Development.
Robert F. Kolkebeck, from Assistant Director (Administration) to Director of Finance.
Dr. Bassett Maguire, from Assistant Director (Botany) to Director of Botany.
Jesse M. Greenman Award
The Jesse M. Greenman Award of the Missouri Botanical Garden will be given to a botanical systematist for the best thesis paper published during the preceding calendar year. The award of $100 is sponsored by the Missouri Botanical Garden Alumni Association. The award will be presented during the American Botanical Society Banquet at the 1969 AIBS meetings in Burlington, Vermont. Papers submitted should have been published during calendar year 1968 and result from M.S. or Ph.D. thesis research in plant systematics. Papers submitted for consideration should reach the following address before 1 May ].969:
David M. Gates, Director
Missouri Botanical Garden
2315 Tower Grove Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri 63110
Summer Research Participation at Oklahoma State
Positions are open for five predoctoral and two postdoctoral participants who are college teachers of biological sciences in areas of plant physiology, physiological genetics, plant ecology, plant taxonomy, and plant pathology. The ten-week session starts June 4, 1969. Apply to Glenn W. Todd, Director, Summer Research Participation Pro-gram, Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74074.
1969 Summer Program in Botany University of Washington
The summer program of courses for this year is an especially interesting one. The nine-week session precedes the XI International Botanical Congress which will be held on the Seattle campus August 24 to September 2.
Much of the course work will be taught by visiting botanists. Four seminar series are anticipated. At Friday Harbor, two courses for graduate students are offered.
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On the Seattle campus:
Botany 111 Elementary Botany; Assistant Professor Haskins.
Botany 113 Elementary Plant Classification; Visiting Associate Professor John McNeill, Hartley Botanical Laboratories, University of Liverpool.
Botany 371 Elementary Plant Physiology; Visiting Associate Professor Michael Black, Queen Elizabeth College, London.
Botany 450 and 451 Terrestrial Plant Ecology; Visiting Professor Grant Cottam, University of Wisconsin; and Assistant Professor Roger del Moral.
Botany 463 Phycomycetes; Professor D. E. Strtz; and Visiting Associate Professor Lewis G. Willoughby, The Freshwater Laboratories, Windermere, England.
Botany 468 Biology of the Slime Molds; Visiting Associate Professor O. Ray Collins, Wayne State University.
Botany 521 Topics in Plant Physiology
Botany 522 Seminar in Taxonomy
Botany 523 Selected Topics in Mycology
Botany 525 Topics in Ecology
At Friday Harbor:
Botany 545 Marine Algology (first half of summer) Associate Professor Richard E. Norris; and Visiting Associate Professor A. D. Boney, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
Botany 575 Problems in Algal Physiology (second half of summer) Visiting Associate Professor William Vidaver, Simon Fraser University, B.C., and Dr. J. A. Gross, Indiana State University, Terre Haute.
Further information may be obtained from the Office of the Summer Session; Office of the Friday Harbor Lab-oratories; or from the Botany Department, Seattle, Washington 98105.
Gatlinburg Wildflower Pilgrimage
The 19th Annual Wildflower Pilgrimage will be held in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and surrounding territory April 24-26, 1969. It is sponsored by the Botany Department of the University of Tennessee, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Gatlinburg Chamber of Commerce, and the Gatlinburg Garden Club. Motorcades and trail hikes under expert leadership take you to areas where spring wildflowers grow in quantity and variety. Morning bird walks are a feature of each day's activities. Special programs are arranged for photographers, and there is an opportunity to show one's own slides.
Each evening there are illustrated lectures on features of the natural history of the Appalachians, a coffee social, and a plant identification clinic. Detailed descriptions of each Pilgrimage activity are furnished at the time of registration.
For further information, write Dept. W. P., Gatlin-burg Chamber of Commerce, Box 527, Gatlinburg, Tennesee 37738, or Dr. Edward E. C. Clebsch, Department of Botany, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37916.
Pre-Convention Conference 1970
Prior to the 1968 AIBS meetings in Columbus a pre-convention conference was held (September 1 and 2) sponsored jointly by AIBS and The Botanical Society of America, Education Committee.
The subject of that conference, "Morphogenesis of Plants," was chosen because of your letters responding to our request in the Plant Science Bulletin. The success of the conference has been expressed in several ways, among them a unanimous vote of those in attendance that another such conference be held in 1970 before the AIBS meetings.
This is an appeal to you, as a member of The Botanical Society of America, to make recommendations for a general theme, or particular subjects around which we can identify a theme, or particular speakers. In making these suggestions please bear in mind that the purpose of the conference is to update those among us who by reason of specialization or preoccupation with teaching have not kept abreast of all exciting frontiers in Botany and Biology. These frontiers will beckon undergraduate students into advanced work only when they are presented well by their instructors.
Our preliminary plans for the 1970 conference must
go to AIBS in June if they are to seek NSF funding for
us. Please send your suggestions as soon as possible to us.
Dr, Helena A. Miller
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15219
International Symposium on Statistical Ecology Under the sponsorship of the International Association of Ecology, an International Symposium on Statistical Ecology is scheduled to be held during August 21-28, 1969, at Yale University and the U.S. Forest Service Research Laboratory, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A., with support from Ford Foundation, The Pennsylvania State University, The University of British Columbia, the U.S. Forest Service and Yale University.
The primary objective of the proposed symposium is to provide opportunity for an exchange of ideas and in-formation between ecologists and mathematicians-statisticians-systems analysts, with particular emphasis on approaches and techniques applicable to the solution of man-environment problems or significant components thereof. Ample time would be available for interested students and researchers to meet and discourse with the professional scientists and specialists as well as to attend the formal sessions. In all sessions suitable time will be allowed for discussion. Invited and selected presentations together with preplanned and spontaneous discussions are expected to appear in the published Proceedings of the Symposium.
With an international organizing committee consisting of E. Batschelet, D. R. Cox, J. Gani, D. W. Goodall, J. Gulland, C. S. Holling, H. Klomp, V. Labeyrie, B. Matern, C. R. Rao, V. Schultz, J. G. Skellam, L. R. Taylor, E. J. Williams with G. P. Patil, E. C. Pielou and W. E. Waters as co-chairmen, the symposium is expected to cover the subject areas such as: Growth and regulation of populations, interacting populations, systems analysis and ecological prediction, productivity and the energy relations of ecosystems, population diffusion and migration, classification
10
and ordination of communities and discrimination problems, compiling and interpreting ecological maps, distribution and abundance of species and species diversity, spatial patterns, homogeneity in vegetation, model making in ecology, distributions in ecology, sampling biological populations: fundamentals and principles, aggregation: meaning and measurement and research and training programs in statistical ecology.
Invitees who have accepted invitations to participate include: D. J. Anderson, C. Auer, W. Baltensweiler, M. S. Bartlett, C. I. Bliss, M. T. Boswell, K. O. Bowman, D. R. Cox, P. Dagnelic, G. M. Furnival, J. Gani, R. L. Giese, M. Godron, P. Greig-Smith; N. G. Hairston, G. P. Harris, W. H. Hatheway, P. Holgate, C. S. Holling, J. Kane, C. D. Kemp, K. A. Kershaw, H. Klomp, V. Labeyrie, L. P. Lefkovitch, M. Lloyd, B. Matern, D. B. Mertz, M. Morisita, J. E. Mosimann, M. D. Mountford, G. Murdie, E. P. Odum, L. Orloci, G. P. Patil, O. Persson, J. Murca Pires, C. R. Rao, L. R. Shenton, J. G. Skcllam, L. B. Slobodkin, F. E. Smith, W. M. Stiteler, Paul Switzer, L. R. Taylor, G. M. VanDyne, W. G. Warren, W. E. Waters, K. E. F. Watt, R. W. Wilson, R. G. Wright.
It is possible that a few selected contributed papers would have a place in the symposium program. The symposium is open for attendance for all those interested. Further information may be available from any member of the organizing committee, including:
Professor G. P. Patil, Program Co-Chairman Department of Statistics, 302 McAllister Building The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvania 16802
BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA, INC.
OFFICERS FOR 1969
PRESIDENT: Harlan P. Banks
Div. of Biological Sciences 214 Plant Science Bldg. Cornell University
Ithaca, New York, 14850 VICE-PRESIDENT: B. L. Turner
Department of Botany University of Texas
Austin, Texas, 78712
SECRETARY: Richard C. Starr (1965-69) Department of Botany Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana, 47401
TREASURER: Theodore Delevoryas (1968-
72)
Department of Biology
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut. 06520
PROGRAM DIRECTOR: C. Ritchie Bell (1967-69) Department of Botany University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, North Carolina,
27514
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: William Stern (1967-69) Department of Botany University of Maryland College Park, Maryland,
20740
Leonard Machlis (1968-70) Department of Botany University of California Berkeley, California, 94720
Harold C. Bold (1969-71) Department of Botany University of Texas
Austin, Texas, 78712 EDITOR, Charles Heimsch
AMERICAN Department of Botany
JOURNAL OF BOTANY Miami University Oxford, Ohio, 45056
EDITOR, Adolph Hecht
PLANT SCIENCE BULLETIN: Department of Botany Washington State University Pullman, Washington, 99163
BUSINESS MANAGER, Lawrence J. Crockett
AMERICAN The City College
JOURNAL OF BOTANY University of the City of New York
Convent Avenue & 139th St. New York, New York, 10031
SECTIONAL OFFICERS AND COUNCIL
MEMBERS FOR 1969'
.PAST PRESIDENT, 1968: 'Arthur Galston Department of Biology
Yale University
New Haven. Connecticut, 06520
PAST PRESIDENT, 1967: Ralph Emerson
Department of Botany University of California Berkeley, California, 94720
PAST PRESIDENT, 1966: *Harold C. Bold Department of Botany The University of Texas Austin, Texas, 78712
DEVELOPMENTAL SECTION: 'Ian Sussex
Chairman (1968) : Department of Biology Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut, 06520
Vice-Chairman (1968) : Richard M. Klein Department of Botany University of Vermont Burlington, Vermont, 05401
Secretary (1966-69) : William T. Jackson
Dept. of Biological Sciences Dartmouth College
Hanover, New Hampshire, 03755
GENERAL SECTION:
Chairman (1969-70): Richard H. Eyde Department of Botany Smithsonian Institution Washington, D.C., 20560
Vice-Chairman (1969-70): Charles H. Uhl
Division of Biological Sciences
Plant Science Bldg.
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York. 14850
Secretary-Treasurer (1969-70): 'David Bierhorst
Department of Botany University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts,
01002
HISTORICAL SECTION:
Chairman (1969) : Edmund Berkeley Department of Biology University of North Carolina Greensboro, North Carolina,
27410
Vice-Chairman (1969): Emanuel D. Rudolph Dept. of Botany &
Plant Pathology
Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio, 43210
Secretary-Treasurer (1966-69): ',Jerry W. Stannard Department of History University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas, 66044
11
MICROBIOLOGICAL SECTION:
Chairman (1969) : Vernon Ahmadjian Professor of Botany University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts,
01002
Vice-Chairman (1969) : Roger A. Goos
Department of Botany University of Hawaii Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822
Secretary (1966-69) : Dorothy I. Fennell 13201 Parklawn Drive American Type Culture
Collection
Rockville, Maryland, 20852
Representative to the Council *Alma W. Barksdale
(1966-69) : The New York Botanical Garden
Bronx Park, New York, 10458
PALEOBOTANICAL SECTION:
Chairman (1969) : Arthur Cridland
Department of Botany Washington State University Pullman. Washington, 99163
Secretary-Treasurer (1969) : *John W. Hall
Department of Botany University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota,
55455
PHYCOLOGICAL SECTION:
Secretary (1969) : *Philip Cook
Department of Botany University of Vermont Burlington, Vermont, 05401
PHYSIOLOGICAL SECTION:
Secretary (1969) : Graeme P. Berlyn School of Forestry
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut, 06511
PHYTOCHEMICAL SECTION:
Chairman (1969) : *Tom J. Mabry Department of Botany The University of Texas Austin, Texas, 78712
Vice-Chairman (1969): Rainer W. Scora
Dept. of Horticultural Science
University of California Riverside, California, 92502
Secretary (1969) : Jerry McClure Department of Botany Miami University
Oxford, Ohio, 45056
SYSTEMATIC SECTION:
Chairman (1969) : *Roy L. Taylor
Director of the Botanical Gardens
University of British Columbia
Vancouver 8, British Columbia. Canada
Secretary (1969): L. I. Nevling
Arnold Arboretum &
Gray Herbarium
22 Divinity Avenue Cambridge, Masschusetts. 02138
TEACHING SECTION:
Chairman (1969-70 ) : J. Louis Martens Department of Biology Illinois State University Normal, Illinois, 61761
Vice-Chairman (1969-70) : O. J. Eigsti
Illinois Teachers College Chicago South
3800 So. Stewart Avenue Chicago, Illinois, 60621
Secretary (1969-70) : "Irving W. Knobloch Dept. of Botany &
Plant Pathology Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan,
48823
NORTHEASTERN SECTION:
Chairman (1969) : "Leon I. Cohen
Department of Biology
State University of New York
Cortland, New York, 13045
Secretary-Treasurer (1968-71) : Robert K. Zuck
Department of Botany Drew University
Madison, New Jersey, 07940
PACIFIC SECTION:
Chairman (1969) : Arthur Holmgren Department of Botany Utah State University Logan, Utah, 84321
Secretary-Treasurer (1969) : "Elizabeth Cutter Department of Botany University of California Davis, California, 95616
SOUTHEASTERN SECTION:
Chairman (1968-69) : James W. Hardin Department of Botany North Carolina State
University
Raleigh, North Carolina, 27607
Secretary-Treasurer (1967-70): *Dorothy L. Crandall Department of Biology Randolph-Macon Woman's
College
Lynchburg, Virginia, 24504
* (Those persons so marked with an (* ) are members of the Council. The Council also includes the Officers of the Society except those elected to the Editorial Committee.)
Book Reviews
HULTEN, ERIC. Flora of Alaska and Neighboring Terri-
tories. A Manual of the Vascular Plants. Stanford
University Press, Stanford, California. 1968. 1008
pages. $35.00.
The dean of arctic floristicians and phytogeographers has produced in this incredible volume a lavish encore to his earlier oracle, "Flora of Alaska and Yukon" (1940-49). The new flora is a diagnostic manual designed for a larger public than the previous research flora, and as such it is more compact and includes keys to the families and genera as well as to the species. The more complete keys will please all users who have ever found themselves stymied
12
in the older work by the absence of keys to the genera. But, alas!, the size and the price are hardly calculated to make it either a field manual or a layman's handbook. It is likely to remain in the laboratory or herbarium, where, however, it will be indispensable to the student of Alaskan plants and, especially by virtue of the maps, to all arctic botanists. This is not only a model flora, incorporating an extraordinary amount of personal experience and insight, but also another of the outstanding contributions to arctic geobotany for which Professor Hultēn is so famous. No other living botanist is as con-versant on the arctic and boreal plants of the entire circumpolar realm from North America to Asia to Europe to Greenland. It would be hard to exaggerate the practical and theoretical influence of his studies on floristicians and phytogeographers. In this new volume we are presented with almost a lifetime of thoughts on the Alaskan flora, distilled into a fresh descriptive conspectus that succinctly reveals his taxonomic concepts.
The spacious page format sparkles with clarity. On the average, two species are treated per page, and the treatments are always contained on the same page, so that one need not turn elsewhere for a map or an illustration. Unfortunately, this very pleasing layout also wastes much space that could have been traded off for less bulk, making the book truly a field manual. Each species is featured with a short description, a line drawing or two, and two maps. Distribution in the territory of the Flora is shown in a dot map, and the other map depicts the circumpolar range in outline. The description may include a general habitat characterization. Discussion of biology, taxonomy, or nomenclature is kept to an absolute minimum; the book is purely an identification manual. Taxonomic and nomenclatural changes are presented in an earlier paper (Arkiv for Botanik 7: 1-147, 1967), where Professor Hultēn can prove a little hard to convince with detailed biosystematic evidence. Thus, thorough investigations like that of Argus on the Salix glauca complex are waved aside, and one has the impression that sometimes Hultēn is trapped by his own fruitful but seemingly a priori historical arguments. To those who find him subspecies-happy it should be pointed out that he has provided taxonomists with a dynamic, geographical point of view that serves to set up numerous hypotheses for intensive investigation by others. Above all, Hultēns new Flora will help enormously to stabilize the names of arctic plants. He has picked his way through prolific Russian splitting to emerge as before with a moderate species concept.
The book includes a valuable introduction, covering ecological, geographical, and historical aspects of the flora, and closes with an extensive glossary, list of authors, and bibliography. The middle of the book is graced by eight pages of spectacular color photographs of plants and places. The book is a triumph by any standards and certainly a new milestone in the floristic literature of North America. The Stanford University Press is to be congratulated for its technical production, and special mention is due Dr. John Hunter Thomas for editorial work.
Stanwyn G. Sheller HEWITT, E. J. AND C. V. CUTTING, editors. Recent As-
pects of Nitrogen Metabolism in Plants. (First Long
Ashton Symposium, 1967) Academic Press, New York.
1968. 280 pages. $11.50.
This selection of papers is the outcome of a symposium
held at the University of Bristol in April, 1967. All of
the 88 participants were from the British Isles. The 14
papers were presented in three sections: "Transformations
in inorganic nitrogen metabolism and fixation"—E. W.
Yemm, Chairman; `Intermediate metabolism of amino
acids and relationships with mineral nutrition and protein
synthesis"—F. R. Whatley, Chairman; and "Interaction of
nitrogen metabolism with external factors"—O. V. S.
Heath, Chairman. Discussions were held following each
section, and E. W. Yemm gave an excellent summary at
the close of the symposium, especially directed toward the
importance of respiratory and photosynthetic processes in
nitrate assimilation and in biosynthesis of amino acids
and proteins. Although there is a slight unevenness in the
papers in topicality and depth of treatment, the overall
quality is excellent. The "recent" denotation in the title
is a valid measure of the references of which the great
majority were published within the past four or five years.
Howard E. Brewer
REINHOLD, L. AND Y. LIWSCHITZ, editors. Progress in Phytochemistry, Volume 1. Interscience Publishers, New York, 1968. 723 pages. $23.75.
This volume contains eleven chapters entitled as follows: Acyl Lipids and Fatty Acids of Photosynthetic Tissue; Chemistry of Plant Cuticles; Relationship between Plant Growth Hormones and Nucleic Acid Metabolism; Recent Advances in the Chemistry of the Tetracyclic Diterpenes; Biosynthesis of the Gibberellins; Lichen Substances; Biochemistry and Physiology of Phytochrome; Biochemistry and Postulated Mechanisms of Nitrogen Fixation; The Tropane Alkaloids; Biochemical Systematics; Constituents of Ferns.
Each chapter, authored by an expert (s) in the field, admirably conforms to the two-fold intention of the series, to wit: (1) to present sufficient background in-formation to give the non-expert a comprehensive view of the subject matter; (2) to provide the expert with recent advances in the field.
Several of the chapters will be of great utility to the
plant physiologist, since their counterparts do not exist
elsewhere. This reviewer, for one, is looking forward
with great anticipation to future volumes in this series.
Joseph Scheibe
DARLINGTON, ARNOLD. The Pocket Encyclopaedia of Plant Galls in Colour. Philosophical Library, New York. 1968. 191 pages. $7.50.
Three short introductory chapters, entitled, "Galls: Their Cause and Variety," "Gall Occupants and How they Live," and "Practical Work," occupy only 30 pages. On the next 80 pages are 293 excellent colored illustrations of galls and the main types of animals that colonize them. A few fungus-induced galls are also shown. The remaining pages of the text provide an annotated listing of representative British host plants and their galls, followed by an index to common and scientific names of gall occupants and host plants. Adolph Hecht
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