6 PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



Ireland, True's whale (Mesoplodon minis), a very rare species; 

 and another specimen has since been identified in the Gahvay 

 Museum, caught in 1899 in Galway Bay. Whales have 

 become much scarcer both in the N. & S. seas, and are in 

 need of such protection as has just saved the seals of 

 Macquarie Island from extinction. A young live okapi, the 

 first seen in Europe, was presented to the Zoological Gardens 

 at Antwerp by a lady who had kept it in Africa as a pet for 

 three years; but it has, I regret to say, lately died. A dissertation 

 on the association of certain small glands of the human body 

 with various striking effects, such as growth and pigmentation, 

 would seem to belong to Zoology, but was the chief subject of 

 the Address of the President of the Anthropological Section 

 of the British Association, who shewed their probable influence 

 on the differentiation of mankind into Racial types. 



BOTANY AND AGRICULTURE. 



Our Club will have felt honoured by the election of our 

 Vice-president, Sir Daniel Morris, as President of the 

 Botanical Section of the British Association at its last meeting 

 at Bournemouth. In his address, he gives an interesting 

 account of what has been done in the development of varieties 

 of sugar cane, wheat, cotton, and other plants of great 

 economic importance, which will produce large crops of 

 superior quality and resist the diseases to which they are 

 subject. The report of the Empire Cotton Growing Committee 

 has lately been issued, giving various suggestions, both 

 theoretical and practical, to overcome the serious difficulty 

 caused by the fact that English mills are chiefly adapted for 

 American long-stapled cotton, which is now being much more 

 manufactured in its native country and therefore not so 

 available here. The cotton of India and some other countries 

 is shorter stapled and not of such good quality. It is therefore 

 desired to supplant this by varieties similar to the American. 

 The recent experiments in flax growing in this country do 

 not seem to have been very successful owing to the expense of 



