488 



local taxes on time and purse, which only interfere with the one use- 

 ful and general object mentioned. Tempora mutantur : the object 

 for which scientific societies used to be instituted are now better 

 effected by periodical literature, by travelling, by correspondence, 

 and by exchanges. Collective libraries are still important ; but we 

 have one for botany at the Linnean Society, and cannot have one at 

 the Botanical Society of London. 



Hewett C. Watson. 

 Thames Ditton, February, 1 849. 



BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



Friday, March 2, 1849. — John Reynolds, Esq., Treasurer, in the 

 chair. 



A donation of British plants was announced from Mr. T. West- 

 combe. 



Mr. E. Berry, of Barnsley, Yorkshire, was elected a corresponding 

 member. 



A paper was read from Mr. Arthur Henfrey, containing some re- 

 marks on the "Discrimination of Species." While estimating highly 

 the value of minute inquiry into the conditions presented by plants, 

 the author could not overlook the inconveniences that arise from 

 hastily giving a specific value to peculiar forms. All the deductions 

 of philosophical Botany depend upon the fixity of species, as the 

 science of numbers does on the definite nature of units. If we admit 

 transitions, we can only define a species as a particular abstract form, 

 more or less completely realised in nature, under peculiar conditions, 

 which we do not yet understand ; but if, as is usually the case, we 

 admit the fixity of species, we are bound to exercise sufficient care in 

 our observations, to avoid raising accidental variations to this rank. 

 In reference to M. Jordan's views, it was observed that he also regards 

 the species as an absolute, and not an abstract form, but on this 

 ground calls every tolerably constant variety a species. Mr. Henfrey 

 considered that an important point was overlooked as to the nature of 

 varieties. He regarded them all as abnormal conditions, depending 

 upon the morphological and physiological relations of the different 

 organs. Accordingly, he would take that as the true example of a 

 species in the Phanerogamia, in which the seeds (the highest pro- 

 duct) were most perfectly and abundantly produced, in a generally 



