FLORA OF THE TORRES STRAITS. 433 
In sketching the progress of morphology during the last fifty 
years, I pointed out how the inconsistency in view which divided 
biology into two sections disappeared with the old teleology. Also 
how of late years attention has been directed to the cell as the 
morphological unit, and how morphologists have been greatly 
interested in the manifestations of cellular activity which are 
concerned in growth and heredity. 
The physiologists, too, having studied the chemistry and physics 
of phenomena associated with the life of higher animals, have 
tracked physiological activity into the cell. Here, for the time 
being, a view of the mechanism is lost, and cellular physiology does 
not appear capable of being successfully attacked along the same 
lines of mechanical interpretation which have proved so successful 
in dealing with the functions of compound organs. 
The full recognition of the cell as the physiological unit, and the 
study of cellular activity from every side has already yielded 
valuable results, and shows every indication of being the direction 
of future biological progress. 
One must not imagine that the morphological or physiological 
inquiry of the character which has been so fruitfully prosecuted 
during the last half-century is in any sense exhausted. Enough has 
been done, however, to disclose their limitations as far as a complete 
understanding of life is concerned. Enterprising thinkers have, 
therefore, been considering new methods of attacking the problem, 
It is just in this fresh attack upon biology that the adherents of 
the two great divisions of biological inquiry—students of form and 
students of function—tind themselves side by side, and discover 
that, after all, though under different names, they have both been 
striving at much the same object—viz., the interpretation of 
living activities. 
BOTANICAL PAPERS. 
No. 1.—A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE FLORA OF THE 
ISLANDS OF TORRES STRAITS AND THE MAIN- 
LAND ABOUT SOMERSET. 
By F. Manson Barney, F.L.8., Colonial Botanist for Queensland. 
(Read Friday, January 7, 1898. ) 
In June last it was my good fortune to spend three weeks in the 
above northern portions of Queensland, and by the kind assistance 
of the Government Resident, the Hon. John Douglas, C.M.G., I 
was enabled to visit Goode Island, Hammond Island, Turtle 
