Nov. 1907. | THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 375 
his presence innocuous. There is undoubtedly a great and 
fruitful field for research on such lines in the department of 
plant hygiene just as there is in animal hygiene. 
BOTANICAL EDUCATION. 
While looking up the record of some deceased Fellows, I 
was impressed with the fact that many of the great botanists 
of the past were members of the medical profession. One 
eannot but regret that less attention is paid to systematic 
botany by the medical student of to-day, for many of them 
receive appointments in foreign lands or distant parts of the 
empire, and their botanical training fits them to become 
pioneers of empire and benefactors of science. There is 
some compensation for this loss in the fact that the value of 
economic botany and applied science to commercial industries 
is now more generally recognised, and thus there is no fear 
of any real diminution in botanical education. 
NATURE-KNOWLEDGE. 
Edueationists, too, are realising that there has been too 
much of the mere text-book and the class-room in our system 
of education in publie schools. We must bring the young 
mind into practical contact with the world of facts in which 
he lives and moves and has his being. Hence the modern 
development of nature-teaching. If this is to be properly 
done it involves a curriculum in biological science for school 
teachers, and movements are already being made in this 
direction. There can be little doubt, too, that a taste for 
botanical studies will be created in the minds of many 
scholars, and all that must tend to the advantage of botanical 
science and an increase in the number devoting themselves 
to its pursuit. 
RuRAL DEPOPULATION AND THE HOUSING OF THE POOR. 
One of the greatest and most pressing problems of to-day 
in Scotland is the depopulation of our rural districts and the 
massing of the great majority of the people into a few densely 
crowded areas. The pressure of this problem has given rise 
