POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 57 



and bodily protection ; to it we owe the development of our 

 sestlietic sense in large degree. It may be true that to-day in a 

 civilized democracy there is no proper place for personal orna- 

 ment and decoration ; but we can forgive much of weak display 

 and many a useless survival of the past on account of what per- 

 sonal vanity has done for man's progress. 



SOME OF THE POSSIBILITIES OF ECO:NrOMIC 

 BOTANY.* 



By GEOEGE LINCOLN GOODALE. 



/^UR Association demands of its president, on his retirement 

 V^ from office, some account of matters connected with the 

 department of science in which he is engaged. 



But you will naturally expect that, before I enter upon the 

 discharge of this duty, I should present a report respecting the 

 mission with which you intrusted me last year. You desired me 

 to attend the annual meeting of the Australasian Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, and express your good wishes for 

 its success. Compliance with your request did not necessitate 

 any material change in plans formed long ago to visit the South 

 Seas ; some of the dates and the sequence of places had to be 

 modified ; otherwise the early plans were fully carried out. 



I can assure you that it seemed very strange to reverse the 

 seasons, and find midsummer in January. But in the meeting 

 with our brethren of the southern hemisphere nothing else was 

 reversed. The official welcome to your representative was as 

 cordial and the response by the members was as kindly as that 

 which the people in the northern hemisphere would give to any 

 fellow-worker coming from beyond the sea. 



The meeting to which I was commissioned was held in Jan- 

 uary last in the cathedral city of Christchurch, New Zealand, 

 the seat of Canterbury College. 



Considering the distance between the other colonies and New 

 Zealand, the meeting was well attended. From Hobart, Tas- 

 mania, to the southern harbor, known as the Bluff, in New Zea- 

 land, the sea voyage is only a little short of one thousand miles 

 of rough water. From Sydney in New South Wales to Auckland, 

 New Zealand, it is over twelve hundred miles. If, therefore, one 

 journeys from Adelaide in South Australia, to Christchurch, New 

 Zealand, where the meeting was held, he travels by land and by 



* Presidential address delivered before the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science, at Washington, August, 1891. 



VOL. XL. — 5 



