REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON GENETICS. 59 
ago, “it may confidently be asserted that the Society has done and is 
doing a great work.” 
The Chairman proposed “Our Guests.” He said:—It is due to our 
guests that our thanks should be well and heartily expressed, as they have 
responded to our invitation to attend this most important and valuable 
Conference—this International Conference on Hybridisation. Our guests 
are all men who are experts in either or in both scientific and practical 
horticulture, and they have come from all parts of the world; and it is a 
sreat privilege to the members of this Club to invite these distinguished 
gentlemen from other countries, and also those representatives from the 
United Kingdom whom the space at our command permits, to give us the 
honour and the pleasure of their company at this banquet here to-night. 
It seems to me, however, that there is another motive in our breasts in 
welcoming such a gathering as we see here to-night, a motive which I may 
call the brotherhood of kindred tastes. We are all aiming at higher 
standards for the future, for which we hardly at the present moment 
know how to aspire. ‘These tastes have been recognised by the different 
counties of England, and their County Councils have decided that in 
future, in the education of the people, a knowledge of horticulture shall 
form a part, which will, I am sure, raise the whole tone of the tastes and 
lives of the young people of this country. Horticulture is useful, 
elevating, pure, healthy, and progressive, and it is on the behalf of 
progress in horticulture that you gentlemen have come together on this 
occasion. If you look back three or four hundred years there are things 
that were then quite luxuries, but which at the present day are the 
necessaries of life, and there are things which were quite unknown at that 
time. Take, for instance, tobacco: it is not a necessity of life for me, 
because I do not smoke; but it has become a necessity to many, and there 
are hosts of similar things, such as the potato, tea and coffee, and cocoa, 
which have now become necessities for men, women, and children. And 
as a few hundred years ago these things were unknown, but have now 
become necessaries in the lives of the people, so it is for the welfare of the 
rising generation that the knowledge of such subjects as hybridisation 
and plant breeding should be studied, and the probable result that may be 
obtained considered. At the conclusion of this Conference you will all, I 
have no doubt, go away to your distant homes and work for the benefit of 
the community at large, and may we all in the future come back and 
enjoy many such useful and pleasant reunions such as we have here 
to-night. 
Mr. Bateson, F.R.S., V.M.H., was the first to respond. He said :—I 
wish I could express some part of what I feel on rising to return thanks 
for the guests to-night. This is a very different occasion from that in 
1899, when I had the honour of being invited to a somewhat similar 
dinner by the Horticultural Club, when we assembled in a little company 
numbering about thirty guests in all, members of the first Hybridisation 
Conference. I think one has only to look round this large room to feel 
how wonderfully the field has developed since those days, how much the 
interest has been increased. I am returning thanks for the guests for 
an entertainment of no common order. The entertainment I may 
describe as princely, and we have only to look at the wonderful 
