HXXEAN SOCIEXY OF LON'DOX. ^^ 



remarkable genera which yoa taus^lit us so much about are uow 

 again to the fore in the minds of botanists. 



Tlie next period was occupied with the morphology of the 

 leaf, treated of in an important paper presented to the Royal 

 Society in 1S84, in which the idea of the phyllopodium, or leaf-axis, 

 was developed, and in the next year in your work on the apes of 

 the leaf in Osmunda and Todea, a subject moi'e closely related to 

 your subsequent research. Another early Vascular Cryptogam 

 paper was that on Phylloglossum, a good example of a simple 

 form which is apparently not so priraitiye as we once thought. 



Tour most important contribution to the publications of our 

 own Society was the great paper on " Apospory and allied 

 Phenomena," suggested by Mr. Druery's observations and read in 

 1886. This was of extreme interest in itself, and also, as j^ou 

 have 3'ourself told me, from its leading you on to the views of 

 Alternation of Generations which you maintained for so many 

 years. 



These views took definite shape in the memoir on " Antithetic 

 as distinguished from Homologous Alternation in Plants," published 

 in 1890. The subject of apospory in particular vv-as further pursued 

 in the papers on TricJiomanes. 



A memoir on " The Comparative Examination of the Meristems 

 of Ferns as a Phylogenetic Study," 1889, was still written under 

 the influence of the old idea that the Leptosporangiate .Ferns 

 were the most primitive, but two years later you turned the 

 phylogenetic order upside down, and quite rightly so, when you 

 discussed the question : — Is the Eusporaugiate or the Lepto- 

 sporangiate Type the more primitive in the Ferns? Your new 

 conclusions were in harmony with fossil investigation, and this 

 reminds me of your paper on the axis of Lejndostrohus Brownii, 

 1893, a bye-product of your great sporangial synthesis, but to 

 the palaeobotanist a valuable one. 



Your Theory of the Strobilus in Archegoniate Plants defined 

 the position which you held with so much determination and 

 resource for the next 15 years — the period of maturity of the 

 antithetic doctrine. I think we both have not unpleasant re- 

 collections of the lively and inspiriting controversies which marked 

 the adolescence of the theor}\ Your great series on the Spore- 

 producing members, 1894-1903, affords one of the most striking 

 examples of the inestimable value of a thoroughly thought out 

 working hypothesis (whether ultimately verified or not) as a guide 

 to research. 



Leaving many other papers of yours uumentioned I pass on to 

 that admirable book "The Origin of a Land Flora," published last 

 year, in which your long career of morphological research, for the 

 time being, culminated. Since then, to judge from what passed at 

 a memorable meeting of our Society last February, some change 

 has come in your theoretical position, and much as we all respect 

 the openness of mind with which you faced a changed situation, 



LINX. SOC. PKOCEEDINGS. — SESSION 1908-1909. d 



