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opening Address. [Sess. 



had visited these places aud looked upon the wild-flowers I 

 found, or their predecessors, for more than a century. Yet they 

 had flowered on year after year, unknown and neglected, and 

 it almost seemed as if they had been growing on through all 

 the decades of a hundred and twelve years for me alone. I can- 

 not express to you how overwhelming was to my mind the 

 feeling that the Creator of all things had preserved such beauti- 

 ful forms to flower far from the beaten track in the bleak wilds 

 of Kum, for all these years unnoticed and forgotten, but in me 

 once more to gladden a human heart. 



But time will not permit me to go further into an investiga- 

 tion as to the merits of Dr Lightfoot, and I must endeavour to 

 point out to you one or two fields in which, as botanists, you 

 can work with success, and confer at the same time a benefit 

 on science. I have no doubt you have all heard of the late 

 Mr Hewett Cottrell Watson, the author of 'Topographical 

 Botany.' He was a man of whom it may be said that in some 

 respects he lived before his time, and I am afraid that some 

 of his fellow botanists of fifty years ago were hardly able to 

 appreciate his genius. It is to Mr Watson that we owe the 

 present position of British Topographical Botany. It has been 

 through his labours that such a correct record of the plants 

 discovered in each district has been obtained. His researches 

 revealed those parts of our country that were neglected, and 

 set botanists to work to record the flora of these districts. The 

 outcome has been, that willing workers have laboured steadily 

 during recent years with splendid results. Still the work goes 

 on with earnestness, and some of you might join in it. I had 

 a large amount of correspondence with the late Mr Watson, 

 and in one of his last letters to me he said that Wigton and 

 Wester Eoss-shire were the two districts in Scotland that needed 

 most attention. Both districts have now been pretty well 

 worked up, but that there is still work to do is evidenced by 

 the new records for Wester Eoss-shire obtained by the parties 

 forming the camp of the Botanical Society this summer. 

 Eemember, common plants as well as rare, if discovered in 

 a district for the first time, are records, and at times it is 

 much more valuable to have the evidence obtained from ob- 

 serving common plants than from those that are seldom 

 met with. In collecting plants, as far as possible take a 



