288 Plant Origins. [Sess. 



XL— PLANT ORIGINS. 



(Report from the Microscopical Section.) 



By Mr W. C. CRAWFORD, M.A., F.R.S.E. 



(Read April 28, 1S97.) 



At the beginning of the present session, the Council of this 

 Society very wisely resolved to revive the Microscopical Section, 

 which had been in a somewhat dormant state for a few years. 

 In doing so, they appointed me Convener of tbe Section ; and 

 it is now my duty to give a short report of what the Section 

 has been doing during the past winter. It was not easy to 

 start at once in November to do good work, with material 

 neither at hand nor bottled up for use. We had to find our 

 material as best we could ; and it might be more correct to 

 say that this report is rather about what we have been trying 

 to do than what we have actually accomplished. 



We met fortnightly duriug winter, on Saturday evenings, 

 from seven till half-past nine o'clock. Our plan was that the 

 meetings should be co-operative in character — that is, each 

 member, as far as possible, was expected either to collect 

 materials for examination or to read up some special article 

 bearing upon the work of the section. This was not easy to 

 arrange, but as we believe it is the right way to proceed, we 

 hope to develop the plan in future sessions. 



The other fundamental idea was, that the Section should 

 restrict itself to the study of one class of plants or animals 

 each winter. When we limit our attention to a single class or 

 group, we get more real knowledge than if we spread our 

 studies over a wider field. The individual organism is the 

 only real thing in living nature. Species, orders, and classes 

 are generalisations which correspond more or less truly with 

 the individuals which compose them. Asa Gray has very 

 truly said, " species are judgments." On the other hand, we 

 wish to avoid the extreme into which the past generation of 

 naturalists fell, of contenting ourselves with collecting as many 

 manifestly distinct individuals as we can, and so making up 



