8 PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



made people think for themselves ; but it seems to have had 

 the opposite effect, and this is by no means confined to the 

 realm of natural history, for people with the wildest ideas and 

 most insane theories in any subject seem to get followers for 

 a time. Perhaps in the next generation these forms of mania 

 will all be scientifically classed as proceeding from different 

 species of bacilli ! People used to think, now they read 

 instead. There are, of course, many brilliant exceptions to this 

 state of mind, especially, I hope, in the Dorset Field Club. 

 The growing of sugar-beet in England as a profitable 

 crop, and producing some of our own sugar, has been 

 recently before the public, and no doubt might be success- 

 fully done. On the other hand the sugar-cane which had 

 sunk to such a low ebb, has in the past few years outstripped 

 its rival, owing, I suppose, to a popular opinion of its 

 superiority, with which I must confess I agree ! A great 

 waste of timber appears to go on in America, the proportions 

 of growth and destruction being estimated at 12 and 40 

 cubic feet to the acre per annum respectively. Forest fires 

 are responsible for a portion of this. A neat comment on 

 the climate of Labrador is furnished by the measurement of 

 a larch at its southern end, which, though 32 years old 

 measures but 9 inches in height and fin. in d ameter. If 

 this is included in the average estimates just mentioned, how 

 enormous must be the growth elsewhere to counteract it. I 

 regret to say that the wart disease of potatoes, caused by a 

 fungus which was first reported in this country in 1901, in 

 Shropshire, has now spread into 30 counties. Some varieties 

 of potatoes resist it better than others, but no satisfactory 

 cure is known. A report on the subject has lately been 

 published by the Harper Adams Agricultural College. 



GEOLOGY. 



I hardly think that the various estimates of the age of 

 the earth need detain us long, for in the first place doctors 



