26 rnocEEDixos of the 



PKESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



In my Address last year I ventured to give you a short sketch of 

 the work of some of the founders of scientific palocobotany. The 

 subject which I propose to touch on today, though not dissimilar, 

 has claims on our attention of a more personal nature. The death, 

 during the past year, of the acknowledged leader of Botany, 

 Sir Josepli Hooker, our most distinguished Fellow, is an event 

 which must be present to the minds of all of us. The notice of 

 his career for our Proceedings is in hands more competent than 

 mine ; I shall limit myself to one special field of his activity, that 

 on which alone I feel in a position to speak, and propose to offer 

 jou a few remarks on Hooker's relation to the study of fossil 

 plants. 



Hooker's work on fossil botany begau very early in his career, 

 and was, with one exception, limited to his younger days, though 

 he kept up his interest in the subject all through. 



His first pal?eobotanical paper, dated 1842, is on fossil wood 

 from the Macquarie Plains in Tasmania, a locality which he visited 

 in the course of his famous Antarctic voj'age. The fossil tree 

 (now in the Natural History Museum) was found imbedded in 

 Tertiary basalt ; it is curious to find that in his investigation 

 Hooker made no attempt to have sections cut. In the outer layers 

 no siliceous matter had infiltrated into the intervening spaces 

 between the elements, so that they could be separated for micro- 

 scopic examination, and the " glandular tissue, the distinctive 

 character of a pine-wood," be recognised. More than GO years 

 later the stem was more fully investigated by Dr. Arber, and 

 named Cupressinoccylon Ilookeri. On reading this paper Hooker 

 wrote to me (March 28, 1903): — "I was much amused the other 

 day on finding my infant attempt upon a fossil plant christened in 

 the Geological Journal as a new species of plants ! " 



A Note on a fossil ])lant from the Fish Kiver, South Africa, was 

 another early contribution (1840). No name was assigned to 

 the specimen, probably Ilhastic, and no definite opinion on its 

 affinities was expressed. It has since been referred to the 

 Equisetaceous genus Schizonewa. 



These were unimportant works ; but in 1S46 Hooker was 

 appointed Botanist to the Geological Survey of Great Britain, 

 and though he only held the post for little more than a year, three 

 valuable memoirs, published in 1848, were the immediate result. 

 In fact, this was the time of his most active work on fossil plants. 

 The first of these memoirs is of a general character ; it is " On the 

 Vegetation of the Carboniferous Period as compared with that of 

 the present day," and is of remarkable interest as giving the 

 impression made on the mind of a brilliant young botanist by 

 the then state of our knowledge of Paleozoic plants. He says 

 that his observations " are little more than the first impressions 



