400 BOTANICAL BIOLOGY. 



the remarkable gathering of foreign botanists which will ever make the 

 meeting of this association at Manchester a memorable event to all of 

 us. The reflection rises sadly to the mind that it can never be repeated. 

 Not many months, as you know, had passed before the two most prom- 

 inent figures in that happy assemblage had been removed from us by 

 the inexorable hand of death. 



In Asa Gray we miss a figure which we could never admit belonged 

 wholly to the other side of the Atlantic. In technical botany we recog- 

 nized him as altogether in harmony with the methods of work and 

 standard of excellence of our own most distinguished taxonomists. But 

 apart from this, he had the power of grasping large and far-reaching 

 ideas, which I do not doubt would have brought him distinction in 

 any branch of science. We owe to him the classical discussion of the 

 facts of plant distribution in the northern hemisphere, which is one of 

 the corner-stones of modern geographical botany. He was one of the 

 earliest of distinguished naturalists who gave his adhesion to the theory 

 of Mr. Darwin. A man of simple and sincere piety, the doctrine of de- 

 scent never presented any difficulty to him. He will remain in our 

 memories as a figure endowed with a sweetness and elevation of char- 

 acter which may be compared even with that of Mr. Darwin himself. 



In De Bary we seem to have suflered no less a personal loss than in 

 the case of Gray. Though, before last year, I do not know that he had 

 ever been in England, so many of our botanists had worked under him 

 that his influence was widely felt amongst us. And it may be said that 

 this was almost equally so in every part of the civilized world. His po- 

 sition as a teacher was in this respect probably unique, and the tradi- 

 tions of his methods of work must permanently affect the progress of 

 botany, and indeed have an even wider effect. This is not the occasion 

 to dwell on each of his scientific achievements. It is suflficieut to say 

 that w^e owe to him the foundations of a rational vegetable pathology. 

 He first grasped the true conditions of parasitism in plants, and not 

 content with working out the complex phases of the life-history of the 

 invading organism, he never lost sight of the conditions which permit- 

 ted or inhibited its invasion. He treated the problem, whether on the 

 side of the host or of the parisite, as a Avhole — as a biological problem 

 in fact, in the widest sense. It is this thorough grasp of the conditions 

 of the problem that gives such a peculiar value to his last published 

 book, the " Lectures on Bacteria," an admirable translation of which we 

 owe to Professor Balfour. To this I shall have again to refer. I must 

 content myself with saying now, that in this and all his work there is that 

 note of highest excellence which consists in lifting detail to the level of 

 the widest generality. To a weak man this is a i)itfall, in which a firm 

 grasp of fact is lost in rash speculation. But when, as in De Bary's 

 case, a true scientific insight is inspired by something akin to genius, 

 the most fruitful conceptions are the result. Yet De Bary never sacri- 

 fioed exactness to brilliancy, and to the inflexible love of truth whicU 



