Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/334

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318
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of individual facts, but in the employment of these facts in their relations to the most general notions and their capabilities for the foundation of new and more comprehensive theories—a method of investigation productive of the highest results in all departments of biological science. One of the conclusions reached in this manner, which asserts the "polarity" of the plant cell, is at present beyond the general level of the subject. Polarity will doubtless be recognized as one of the most important physiological properties of protoplasm when the advance of the subject makes its appreciation possible. The researches of Vöchting have dealt principally

The Botanic Institute, View from Wilhelmstrasse.
After a photolithograph, by permission.

with the physiology of movement and what might briefly be termed physiological morphology.

The garden is located in the northeastern part of Tübingen in western Würtemberg, It lies at an elevation of about one thousand feet, on the plateau encircled by the Schwarzwald, in latitude 48° 30' north. Near it are hills covered with forests of pine, which rise two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet above it, while to the southward, twenty miles away, the Swabian Alps reach to a height of twenty-five hundred feet, in consequence of which the night temperature falls far below that of the day. A low winter temperature of -30° C, and a summer limit of 25° to 28° C, help to make a climate which resembles that of southern Michigan in many respects. The area inclosed amounts to about two and six tenths hectares of nearly level land on both sides of the banks of the Ammer, a small tributary to the Neckar. The grounds are planted in the system of Eichler, modified, however, to meet the