Letter to Frederick Orpen Bower from Robert Chapman Davie

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Letter to Frederick Orpen Bower from Robert Chapman Davie in which he thanks Bower for the letter and informs him that he is still in the same location though may be moving soon as the western front is more fluid than it has ever been. He remarks that he is interested in the success of David Thoday and Robert Harold Compton in South Africa and states that he feels encouraged by this as they are both superior to him in age and experience. He discusses Tansley's manifesto remarking that "innuendo was written broadly across it, but I failed (and fail) to see how in the present condition of physiological ecology there is any educative value in its tenets...I am sorry if its target is Seward, for all I have heard, Seward's teaching has impressed his students." He states that he is glad to hear about Bower's book and would like a glance at it and that his own work is at a standstill. He tells Bower that "Water-Works" are still trying to justify their existence and that the Germans dropped bombs a week ago which killed some civilians.

• Academic Disputes
• Appointment to Office
• Plant Ecology
• Scholarly Publishing
• Western Front
• World War, 1914-1918

• Bower | Frederick Orpen | 1855-1948 | regius professor of botany, University of Glasgow
• Compton | Robert Harold | fl1918 | botanist
• Davie | Robert Chapman | 1887-1919 | lecturer in botany, University of Edinburgh
• Seward | Albert Charles | 1863-1941 | professor of botany, University of Cambridge
• Tansley | Sir | Arthur George | 1871-1955 | plant ecologist
• Thoday | David | 1883-1964 | Harry Bolus professor of botany, University of Cape Town

• South Africa