president's address. 78T 



nations have most honorable records in regard to the advancement 

 of botanical science in those regions. At the present time most 

 of the botanical work in the Islands is being done by Great 

 Britain and Germany. The former is carrying on the work, 

 speaking generally, in an intermittent way, organised expeditions 

 for collecting purposes and investigation being infrequent. She 

 has enormous numbers of types, and largely relies on the free-will 

 contributions of travellers and others. Germany, on the other 

 hand, is systematically working up the floras of her dependencies, 

 and the efforts of the Royal Botanical Museum at Berlin in this 

 direction are continuous and indefatigable. A number of publi- 

 cations, some of them of considerable proportions, have already 

 been issued, and every year adds to the volume and value of 

 them. Our German friends attain these results in a variety of 

 ways. Their governing officials in the islands often include^ 

 scientific men, some of them botanists, or at all events botanical 

 collectors. The Imperial Government, through the Royal Gardens 

 at Berlin, or through other botanical establishments, wholly or 

 partially defrays the expenses of young botanists engaged in 

 definite lines of botanical research. The medical officers of her 

 steamships and war-vessels are often men with more or less 

 botanical training, and, I am given to understand, receive greater 

 encouragement to solve botanical problems or to make botanical 

 collections than do British officers in similar situations. The 

 acquisition of botanical collections is, in a measure, incompatible 

 with that preservation of faultless tidiness of decks and other 

 parts of the ship which are the traditional pride of a commander 

 of a British man-of-war, while the accommodation available to 

 officers for the storage of collections, books, ikc, is so limited as, 

 in many cases, to preclude a man from preserving any specimens 

 to illustrate the observations recorded in his note-book. This is. 

 the more to be regretted, as warships, during police or surveying 

 dut}'-, often touch at places which are rarely, if ever, visited by 

 trading vessels. Has not the time arrived when Australia should 

 systematicall}' undertake a share of this botanical work in the 

 South Seas ? Are we to sit down and let British, French, and 



