WNNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDEESS, 1918. 



Once more we staud iudebted to our Treasurer, our Secretaries, 

 and our Councillors for services that have made this session 

 successful and have maintained the secui'ity of our corporation. 



To our Auditors we owe this year especial gratitude. Tlieir 

 duties have been rendered difficult owing to circumstances beyond 

 the control of your officers ; their labours were completed only 

 yesterday. I ask you to permit the thanks of the Society for 

 their care to be placed on our records. 



Again we mourn the loss of many valued colleagues. Two of 

 our yoLiuger members, Mr. Cuthbert St. John Nevill and Mr. 

 Edward John Woodhouse, have laid down lives of much promise 

 in our defence. Among veteran members we lament the deaths 

 of Dr. H. F. Becker, Dr. Robert Braithuaite, and Mr. Worthingfon 

 Gr. Smith, whose Eellowship with tlie Society had attained or 

 exceeded half a century. In Mr. C. T. Druery we have lost an 

 honoured Fellow, full of years, whose observations helped to inspire 

 others to undertake researches of moment. The untimely death of 

 Miss Ethel de Fraiue has deprived us of a colleague whose work 

 had justitied the expectation of further valuable results. In Miss 

 Ethel Sargant and Mr. Philippe de Vilmorin we have lost eminent 

 Fellows, who were also personal friends. 



The 15 names recited in the sad roll-call of our General Secre- 

 tary include no fewer than 13 of our Fellows whose interests were 

 concentrated on the cultivation of the natural history of plants. 



A year ago you gave attention to a survey of the relationship 

 between the pursuits of our Society and the business of life. Let 

 us to-day take some account of the effects of the business of life 

 on the beginnings of the science of natural history. 



The records of kitchen-midden, lake-dwelling, and burial-barrow 

 are not less trustworthy because they are unwritten. They tell 

 us that early man had, among other preoccupations, to consider 

 what he should eat and wherewithal he might be clothed. There 

 are tribes whose social economy remains roughly comparable with 

 that of our ancestors. Where they have succeeded in surviving 

 the benefits of western civilization such tribes find these two 

 exigencies urgent still. The influence of these needs has been as 

 widespread as it has been enduring. They were in all men's 

 minds when the foundations of the Christian faith were being 

 laid ; Travra yap ravra tu eOrr) iirii^eTovniv. 



The first gospel inculcates a Therapeutan disregard of these 

 primitive questions. While, however, the pursuits of our Society 

 prove that man does not live by bread alone, the law that he shall 



