president's address. 803 



been thought of until the expiry of the first half of the nineteenth 

 century. But the method of indicating a type is perhaps a detail; 

 all that we should insist upon is that the author shall unmis- 

 takably indicate on his label his type, and, if necessary, aiford 

 access to it. He will save trouble in the latter respect b}^ dis- 

 tributing specimens to some of the leading herbaria, with the 

 word " type " indicated on the label. My own practice in the 

 National Herbarium of New South Wales has been to mark a 

 type by a label pasted on the specimen thus — 



TYPE 



and I have been punctilious about putting ample information on 

 the label. We Australians know to our cost how difficult sys- 

 tematic work has sometimes been through the easy-going ways of 

 systematists who have preceded us. So long as they were alive 

 they could indicate their own types, or believed the}^ could, but 

 in some cases they have passed away without leaving a sufficiently 

 clear record, and botanical anarchy is sometimes the result. 

 This matter of looseness of description of new plants is ably dealt 

 with by Prof. B. L. Robinson in a recent Presidential Address,"^ 

 which renders unnecessary some similar remarks I had i3repared. 

 I will only say that ample field notes should be attached to the 

 specimen wherever possible. Let them be really field notes, that 

 is to say, written in the field with the tree or other specimen in 

 view, and with the impressions sharp. It is surprising how soon 

 one's memory fails, and what a mine of information there often 

 is in a field note, in a brief expression or form of words written 

 down by a collector with little or no idea of the full meaning of 

 his words, afterwards to be read in the light of ampler knowledge. 



T have, in a disjointed wa}^ I fear, set before you some of the 

 results of recent botanical activity which are of special interest 

 to us, and I have indicated some of the work that requires to be 

 done. Every line of research completed does but open out a 



* Oy. cit. p. 763. 



