78 Proceedings 
The following officers were elected for the ensuing year: 
President. Dr. J. Walters. 
Treasurer. Mr. A. E. Tonge. 
Secretary. Mr. G, E. Frisby. 
Curators. 
Committee, Miss Ethel Sargant, Mrs. G, R. Taylor, Dr. 
T. A. Chapman, Rev. R. Ashington Bullen, 
Rev. E. J. Baker, Messrs. G. W, Butler, J. B. 
Crosfield, E. Dukinfield Jones, R, S. Ragg, 
and C. E. Salmon, 
The Meeting then resolved into an ordinary evening 
meeting. 
Present—23. 
Miss A. Lorrain Smith, F.L.S., lectured on— 
How THE LILY IN ATTACKED AND DESTROYED BY THE 
BoTryYTIS FUNGUS. 
There is no branch of botanical science to which more 
attention has been given in recent years than that of the 
diseases of plants, especially of those caused by parasitic 
fungi. It is the business of the plant pathologist to study 
these diseases, to determine their cause and, if they are 
due to living organisms, to trace their development and find 
out the weak stages in their life history, when a “cure” 
may be satisfactorily applied. 
Disease has been defined as a “disturbance of the nor- 
mal condition of nutrition” and may be due to a variety of 
causes. Plants share with other living beings the incidents 
and accidents of eventful life; they are more or less sens- 
itive to sudden or unseasonable changes of temperature; 
they pass through spells of extreme drought and of extreme 
cold often with disastrous consequences. But disease in 
plants is nearly always caused by some foreign organism 
that settles on the plant or invades its tissue, using up 
the food materials for itself and so gradually weakening 
and destroying the host. These intruders may be fungi, 
including bacteria which work havoc in the tissues of plants 
as well as of animals gaining entrance by wounds or abras- 
ions, or the “disturbance” may be due to animals, insects, 
worms, &c. 
