Book Description

First 3 paragraphs of Preface: In these days of intense activity, when hundreds of papers are being published in every field of botany in a steadily increasing number of periodicals and in a multitude of languages, no apology is needed for an attempt to summarize the existing state of our knowledge in any branch of the subject and to point out the future possibilities in it. Since the publication of Coulter and Chamberlain's "Morphology of Angiosperms" in 1903, no comprehensive account of this aspect of botany has appeared in the English language. The original impetus for writing this work resulted from a course of lectures which I gave on the subject in 1930 when I was teaching at the Agra College. Several colleagues and pupils then suggested that I should produce a book on the embryology of angiosperms. This suggestion was repeated by Professor G. Tischler of the University of Kiel, whom I visited in 1936. Teaching and administrative dutes and other difficulties made it impossible for me to carry on this work in India at the speed I should have liked. Soon after the war was over in 1945, therefore, I took the manuscript to the United States in order to revise it and put it in shape for publication. In a strict sense, embryology is confined to a study of the embryo, but most botanists also include under it the events which lead on to fertilization. I am in agreement with this wider comprehension of the subject and have therfore included in this volume not only an account of the embryo and endosperm, but also an account of the development of the male and female gametophytes and fertilization. To emphasize the recent trends of research in the subject, two chapters of a general nature have been added, one dealing with embryology in relation to taxonomy, and the other with experimental embryology. In the former, an attemt has been made to indicate the possibilities of the embryological method in the solution of problems of systematic botany. In the latter, emphasis has been placed on the contacts between embryology, cytology, genetics, and plant physiology.