24 



types myself ; I merely put it hypothetically, and I am very glad to find 

 that Mr. Carruthers believes the cycads are not a synthetic type. I have 

 never seen them except in greenhouses, and have only taken what I have 

 said of them from books ; but I think I may say that, if there were a 

 synthetic type, one would imagine them to constitute such a type, 

 intermediate between ferns, palms, and conifers. I think that many 

 excellent geologists have been a little too rash in speaking of types 

 as synthetic, especially some of those who are on our side for instance, 

 Sir J. W. Dawson has spoken more than once of plants as being synthetic 

 types, where the evidence does not seem sufficient to justify the term. 

 In reply to Mr. Dent, who asked me how the plants I have spoken of 

 got into the South Pacific Sea, I have nothing to add to what I have 

 already stated. That is a subject that does not belong to the ques- 

 tion dealt with to-night ; but it is, nevertheless, one of great interest. 

 The reason I mentioned the Auckland Islands is that they are as far 

 from Great Britain as they well could be. It is one of the great puzzles in 

 botany to account for the antarctic species. Sir Joseph Hooker said 

 when he first explored those islands, and before he joined the evolutionists, 

 that the remoteness of those parts of the world and their isolation from 

 the nearest land precluded the idea of species having migrated there ; 

 but since then, as he has become more or less of an evolutionist, I 

 suppose he imagines a submerged continent along which the migration 

 may have taken place. The question is, as I have said, a very puzzling 

 one, for instance, how the little butterwort, which is a cold-climate plant, got 

 across the tropics. Those who advocate a slowand gradual migration suppose 

 that these plants went over the tops of the Andes ; but the difficulty still 

 remains how did they get to the islands in the Antarctic Sea ? The subject 

 is a most interesting one, and those who are not botanists would find, in 

 the great libraries to which they may belong, or to which they have access, 

 the Flora Antarctica well worthy of attention, as showing surprising 

 constancy of genera, and as containing plates, coloured by Mr. Fitch, 

 which are of astonishing beauty. I do not assert that all genera are constant ; 

 some, of course, are variable ; but. nevertheless, we have to account for the 

 fact that others are so amazingly persistent ; and it should be remembered 

 that, when we say a genus or species is constant, this involves a vast num- 

 ber of uniformities thousands, in fact down to the most minute points. 

 (Hear, hear.) There is a plant called Bidens tripartita, found in the 

 watercourses in the neighbourhood of London. If you take a specimen 

 and strip off some of the florets that make up the composite flower, the 

 smell of the receptacle at the top of the flower stalk will remind you 

 at once of that of the dahlia, and here we have a very subtle bond of 

 union indicated. Who would expect that this little English composite would 

 show any affinity with a flower so different in appearance, and coming from 

 America? Mr. Hassell made a most interesting remark about a fern. He 

 gave an instance in which a child had recognised at once the likeness 



