Hi. PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



plasmic matter. The red snow plant (Protococcus nivalis), which 

 covers large tracts of melting snow on the Greenland coast, 

 often penetrates to some depth. Parry tells us that on taking 

 a bucketful of this snow on board the ship, and allowing it to 

 settle, the water was seen to contain a delicate gelatinous matter, 

 full of minute grains, which, under the microscope resolved them- 

 selves into globular cells with a thin transparent outer wall, con- 

 taining a colourless liquid sap, within which was a central 

 protoplasmic mass of a deep red colour, and often divided into 

 still more minute globules believed to be reproductive organs. 

 Each of these bodies, only one twelve-thousandth of an inch in 

 diameter, is a perfect plant, capable of performing all the func- 

 tions of vegetable life, and of multiplying in an astonishing 

 manner, at a temperature scarcely above the freezing 'point, and 

 supplied with nourishment and energy by the snow-water, and 

 by the solar light and heat. -It uses, in short, the form of solar 

 light and heat to enable it to decompose the small amount 

 of carbon-dioxide and ammonia in the melting snow, and 

 to construct from these materials and from water the protoplas- 

 mic gelatinous colouring matter ; thus it grows in magnitude 

 and when mature produces microscopic germs, which after being 

 disengaged from the parent-sac spread themselves on the snow, 

 till from one single germ, miles of this are filled with these tiny 

 organisms. We find then here germs, each one possessing 

 powers of a most extraordinary character, that of decomposing 

 carbon- dioxide at a low temperature, and with the help only of 

 solar radiation, a feat impossible for any chemist. This is also 

 the case in the union of the nascent carbon with the other 

 substances to form the mucilage and protoplasm of the sap and 

 the red colouring-matter. 



The group of Algae is one of peculiar interest. It shows an 

 almost continuous succession, connecting these simplest members 

 of the vegetable kingdom with plants of a considerable degree of 

 complexity, and shadows forth the organs of the higher plants. 

 The lowest forms include a conglomeration of cells, each of 

 which may be regarded as a distinct individual, living and growing 



