president's address — SECTION D, 177 



Messrs. E. G. Sealey, Bannier, and Henry Huezenroeder went at different 

 times to Kangaroo Island, and it was on the special solicitations of 

 Baron Sir (then Dr.) F. von Mueller that they brought back plants. 

 Forty-four species, previously unrecorded, were brought to notice by 

 them, though in the ' Flora Australiensis ' the credit is inadvertently 

 given to Baron Mueller, who had never visited the island, but by whom 

 the species were transmitted to Mr. Bentham." (Tate in Proc. R.S., 

 S.A., VI. (1882-5), p. 132). 



Parlatore (DC. Prod. XVI. (2), 447) notes Cypress Pine from 

 " Sealey " from Cape Willoughby and Pink Bay, Kangaroo Island. 



Tate, Ralph. — He was born at Alnwick, Northumberland, in 

 March, 1840, and died in Adelaide, September 20th, 1901. 



His first contribution to botanical science was " Flora belfastiensis ; 

 the plants around Belfast, &c." Belfast, 1863. 16mo. 



In Journ. Bot., iii., 263, re his Shetland Islands expedition, he is 

 spoken of as " a member of a commission appointed by the Anthropo- 

 logical Society." 



Then we have a paper "Upon the Flora of the Shetland Isles," 

 by Ralph Tate, secretary to the Shetland Anthropological Commission, 

 Journ. Bot., iv., 2-15 (Jan., 1866). We have in this early paper 

 evidence of the author's capacity for comparing floras and taking 

 comprehensive views. Another paper on "A New Variety of Andro- 

 meda folifolia " will be found in the same volume, page 377. 



Professor Tate came out to Australia in 1875 as the first occupant 

 of the Elder Chair of Natural Science in the University of Adelaide, 

 and thereafter actively labored to advance a knowledge of the flora, 

 fauna, and geology, primarily of South Australia, but leading up to the 

 consideration of questions of an Australian or Australasian character. 

 In addition to an extensive series of papers comprised in the 25 published 

 volumes of the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 

 Professor Tate also contributed others, at some time or other, to almost 

 every scientific society in Australia. Special mention may be made 

 of his Presidential Address to this Section at the first Sydney meeting 

 of 1888, in which he proposed a threefold division of the endemic Aus- 

 trahan flora according to subregions ; also of his Presidential Address 

 to the Association at the Adelaide meeting of 1893, in which he treated 

 of a century's geological progress in Australia. Professor Tate 

 was a member of the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia 

 in 1894, and an important contributor to the botanical, conchological, 

 and geological sections of the published results of that great under- 

 taking. He was also the author of a " Handbook of the Flora of Extra- 

 tropical South AustraUa," published in 1890. 



I do not propose at this place to give an enumeration of his botanical 

 works ; I have done so in another part of this address. 



Ralph Tate was one of the fast disappearing school of natural 

 history students who took up more than one branch of natural history. 

 In the old days universities styled their chairs " Natural History," 

 M 



