232 



NATURAL SCIENCE. Oct., 



Botany. 



Mr. Thiselton-Dyer, the Director of the Royal Gardens at 

 Kew, was the natural President of the new Botanical Section of the 

 Association. His address ranged over many topics, and its notable 

 feature was its crisp, pungent, stimulating quality. Discussion of 

 half the questions he raised would fill many numbers of Natural 

 Science, and, indeed, might fill them profitably. Using a just and 

 enthusiastic appreciation of Henslow, the friend and teacher, and, in 

 many respects, the inspirer of Darwin, as a text, he made a timely 

 comparison between the old and new schools of Botany. The old 

 school was essentially a school of Natural History. It contented itself 

 with simple appliances : Robert Brown used only a simple microscope, 

 and, acting upon his advice, Darwin had no compound microscope 

 with him on the " Beagle." Its great feature was the observation 

 of things alive in their natural surroundings. The modern school 

 equips itself with the most elaborate appliances : it employs most 

 complicated methods : it is much more a technique than an observa- 

 tion. But Mr. Thiselton-Dyer is possessed of too much insight and 

 too much humour to be of those who 



" Compound the sins they are inclined to, 

 By damning those they have no mind to," , 



and he made his comparison, not to exalt one method at the expense 

 of the other, but that the modern school might remember the merits 

 of their predecessors. We have no doubt but that the young men 

 " trained at Cambridge " will take his agreeable frankness in the 

 spirit in which it was meant. 



Civilisations. 



Professor Flinders Petrie, addressing the Anthropological 

 Section, strongly urged the necessity of a neglected practical side of 

 Anthropology. The English people, by accident or by the genius of 

 their race, are brought in contact with a large number of other 

 civilisations. In dealings with these other civilisations we are apt 

 to attempt the imposition of our own standards and customs upon 

 peoples to which these are alien. "The foremost principle which 

 should be always in view is that the civilisation of any race is not a 

 system which can be changed at will. Every civilisation is the 

 growing product of a very complex set of conditions, depending on 

 race and character, on climate, on trade, and every minutia of the 

 circumstances. To attempt to alter such a system, apart from its 

 conditions, is impossible. For instance, whenever a total change is 

 made in Government, it breaks down altogether, and a resort to the 

 despotism of one man is the result." 



He believes that " the average man cannot receive much more 

 knowledge than his immediate ancestors," and that the attempt to 

 force such knowledge upon him ruins him mentally and physically. 



