Nov. 1907. | THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 365 
up of the country and the influx of an enormous new popu- 
lation, this danger must inevitably be accentuated. Even in 
the homeland, experience in India has suggested the desir- 
ableness of some such State conservancy, and to-day we see 
some signs of a practical beginning in that direction. Sir 
Dietrich Brandis has been a corresponding member of the 
Botanical Society since 1854, a date prior to his entering on 
the great work which made him famous. He was made a 
C.LE. in 1886, and K.C.LE in 1887. For eight years before 
he died he gave himself unremittingly to the production of an 
exhaustive work, published in 1906, on “ The Trees of India,” 
in which he gives detailed descriptions and information 
regarding the trees, shrubs, woody climbers, bamboos, and 
palms in the Indian Empire. It has been said that the 
stimulus of the etfort to complete this great task kept him 
alive, for no sooner had he finished it than he lay down on a 
sick-bed from which he never rose again. He died at his 
native town of Bonn on 28th May 1907, at the ripe age of 
83 years. 
ALEXANDER SOMERVILLE, B.Sc., F.L.S. 
Alexander Somerville was born at Glasgow in 1842, his 
father being the well-known Rev. Dr. A. N. Somerville, 
minister of Anderston Free Church, who became famous 
because of his great missionary tours to many lands. While 
still a boy, Alexander Somerviile was much interested in 
entomology, and from the first he was greatly attracted to 
all branches of natural history. He was educated at Glas- 
gow Academy, and after attending Glasgow University for 
three years, he entered business and proceeded to Calcutta, 
where he remained for fifteen years. During this period he 
seems to have had no leisure to continue the studies and 
pursuits of his earlier youth. Owing to a breakdown in 
health he returned to Scotland, and immediately resumed his 
old pastimes. He also returned to the University, and 
graduated B.Sc. In his earlier investigations his attention 
was devoted chiefly to a critical study of the Mollusca of 
the British Isles, in the course of which he made a most 
exhaustive examination of the seas and lochs on the West 
Coast of Scotland from the Clyde area to the Butt of Lewis 
and Loch Broom. Owing to his expert knowledge of critical 
