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On May 21st December 1902

Quarry Hill Botanical Laboratory.

THE QUARRY HILL BOTANICAL LABORATORY.
IN 1897, Miss Ethel Sargant (O.P.), of Girton College, built
a laboratory at Quarry Hill, Reigate, for botanical research.
The laboratory, which is a corrugated iron building, lighted by
large north windows to avoid direct sunlight, will accommodate

two workers besides Miss Sargant. Miss E.N. Thomas (who
discovered "double fertilisation" in the marsh marigold) has
been Miss Sargant's assistant since the opening of the laboratory.
She is now studying for a time at South Kensington, and her
place is meanwhile taken by Agnes Robertson (O.P.).

Besides the usual accessories—compound and dissecting micro-
scopes, microtomes, waterbaths, and all kinds of reagents, stains,
etc.—the laboratory is fitted with the apparatus for micro-
photography, and connected with a "dark room." There is also
a large and growing botanical library.

Miss Sargant's main work since the laboratory was first
opened, has been an investigation into the anatomy of the seedlings
of monocotyledons, especially of the Liliaceae. The seeds
are grown in pots in a greenhouse close by, and the little plants
are "pickled" while they are still very young, in methylated
spirit or some other preserving fluid. The laboratory is lined
with regiments of little "pickle-pots" containing the seedlings;
so numerous are they that an elaborate system of indexing has
to be resorted to in order to avoid confusion. Some idea of the scale on
which the work is carried out will be gained from the fact that
the laboratory slide-boxes contain sections showing the structure
of some sixty species from the Liliaceae alone! The important
theoretical results to which these five years of laborious research
have led, are shortly dealt with in a paper contributed by Miss
Sargant to the New Phytologist for May, 1902. She comes
to the conclusion that the Liliaceae, with their single seed-leaf,
have been evolved from ancestors with two seed-leaves, by the
fusion of these two into one, so that the single seed-leaf of the
lily family must be regarded as comparable with the two seed-
leaves of an ordinary dicotyledonous embryo, such as that of the
bean or the mustard. This at once leads to the view that the
monocotyledons—instead of being a more primitive group than
the dicotyledons—are in reality an offshoot from them! The
evidence upon which this revolutionary theory is based, and the
various consequences which follow from it, will be discussed at
length in a paper which will shortly appear in the Annals of
Botany, and of which the article in the New Phytologist was
merely a preliminary abstract.

A. R.