September 26, 1895] 



NA TURE 



529 



/ 



observation. Then, though this country is possessed at home of 

 incomparable stores of accumulated material, the class of com- 

 petent amateurs who were mostly trained at our universities, and 

 who did such good service in working that material out, is fast 

 disappearing. It may not be easy indeed in the future to fill 

 important ])osts even in this country with men possessing the 

 necessary qualifications. But there was still another source of 

 naturalists, even more useful, which has i)ractically dried up. It 

 is an interesting fact that the large majority of men of the last 

 generation who have won distinction in this field have begun 

 their career with the study of medicine. That the kind of 

 training that Natural History studies give is of advantage to 

 students of medicine which, rightly regarded, is itself a Natural 

 History study, can hardly be clenied. liul the exigencies of the 

 medical curriculum have crowded them out ; and this, I am 

 afraid, must be accei>ted as irremediable. I cannot refr.iin from 

 reading you, on this point, an extract from a letter which I have 

 received from a distinguished official lately entrusted with an 

 important foreign mission. I should add that he had himself 

 bpen trained in the old way. 



/ " I ha\e had my time, and must leave to younger men 

 the delight of working these interesting fields. Such chances 

 never will occur again, for roads arc now being made and 

 ways cut in the jvmgle and forest, antl you have at hand all 

 sorts of trees level on the ground ready for study. These bring 

 down with them orchids, ferns, and climbers of many kinds, in- 

 cluding rattan palms, &c. But, excellent as are the officers who 

 devote their energy to thus opening up this country, tiiere is not 

 one man who knows a palm from a dragon-tree, so the chance 

 is lost. Strange to say, the medical men of the Government 

 service know less and care less for Natural History than the 

 military men, who at least regret they have no training or study 

 lo enable them to take an intelligent interest in what they see 

 around them. A doctor nowadays cares for no living thing 

 larger or more complicated than a bacterium or a bacillus." 



But there are other and even more serious grounds why the 

 present dominance of one aspect of our subject is a matter for 

 regret. In the concluding chapter of the "Origin," Darwin 

 wrote : " I look with confidence to the future — to young and 

 rising naturalists." But I observe that most of the new writers 

 on the Darwinian theory, and, oddly enough, especially w"hen 

 they have been trained at Cambridge, generally begin by more 

 or less rejecting it as a theory of the origin of species, and 

 then proceed unhesitatingly to reconstruct it. The attempt 

 rarely seems lo me successful, perhaps because the limits of the 

 laboratory are unfavourable to the accumulation of the class of 

 observations which are suitable for the purprjse. The laboratory, 

 in fact, has not contributed much to the Darwinian theory, 

 except the " Law of Recapitulation," and that, I am told, is 

 V^oing out of fashion. 



The Darwinian theory, being, as I have attempted to show, 

 ihe outcome of the Natural History method, rested at every 

 point i>ri a copious basis of fact and observation. This more 

 modern speculation lacks. The result is a revival of tran- 

 scendentalism. Of this we have had a copious crop in this 

 country, but it is quite put in the shade by that with which we 

 have been supplied from .\merica. Perhaps the most remarkable 

 feature is the persistent vitality of Lannrckism. As Darwin 

 remarks : " Lamarck's one .suggestion as to the cau-ie of the 

 •gradual modification of species — efl'ort excited by change of 

 conditions — -was, on the face of it, inapplicable to the whole 

 vegetable world" (ii. 189). And if we fall back on 

 the inherited direct effect of change of conditions, though Darwin 

 admits that " physical conditions have a more direct effect on 

 plants than on animals" (ii. 319), I have never been able to con- 

 vince nivselflhal that etl'ect isinheritcd. I will give one illustration. 

 The difference in habit of even the same species of plant when 

 ;.;rown under mountain and lowland conditions is a matter of 

 L;eneral observation. It would be difficult to imagine a case of 

 " acquired characters " more likely to be inherited. But this 

 does not seem to be the case. The recent careful research of 

 ( laston Bonnier only confirms the experience of cultivators. 

 The modifications acquired by the jjlant when transported for a 

 definite time from the plains lo the .\lps, or vice verstf, disappear 

 ii tile end of the same period when the plant is restored to its 

 original conditions (./««. J. Sc. ii:it., 7= ser. xx. 355). 



Darv\in, in an elofpient passage, which is too long for me lo 

 (|«ote (" Origin," 426), has shown how enormously the interest 

 of Natural History is enhanced "when we regard every pro 

 duction of nature as one which has had a long history," an | 



NO. 1352, VOL. 52] 



"when we contemplate every complex structure ... as the 

 summing up of many contrivances." But this can only be done, 

 or at any rate begun, in the field, and not in the laboratory. 



A more serious peril is the dying out .amongst us of two 

 branches of botanical study in which we have hitherto occupied 

 a position of no small distinction. Apart from the staffs of our 

 official institutions, there seems to be no one who either takes 

 any interest in, or appreciates in the smallest degree, the im- 

 portance of systematic and descriptive botany. And geograph- 

 ical distribution is almost in a worse plight, yet Darwin calls it, 

 "that grand subject, that almost keystone of the laws of 

 creation " (i. 356). 



I am aware that it is far easier to point out an evil than to 

 remedy it. The teaching of botany at the present day has 

 reached a ])itch of excellence and earnestness which it has never 

 reached before. That it is somewhat one-sided cannot probably 

 be remedied without a subdivision of the subject and an increase 

 in the number of teachers. If it has a positive fault, it is that it 

 is sometimes inclined to be too dogmatic and deductive. Like 

 Darwin, at any rate in a biological matter, "I never feel con- 

 vinced by deduction, even in the case of H. Spencer's writings" 

 (iii. 168). The intellectual indolence of the .student inclines him 

 only too gl.adly to explain phenomena by referring them to 

 " isms," instead of making them tell their own story. 



Org.\nisation of Section. 



I am afraid I have detained you too long over these matters, 

 on which I must admit I h ive spoken with soaie frankness. But 

 I take it thtt one of th; objects of our Section is to deliver our 

 minds of any perilous stuff that is fermenting in it. Bat now, 

 having taken leave of the past, let us turn to the future. 



We start at least with a clean slate. We cannot bind our 

 successors, it is true, at othir meetings. Bit I cannot doubt 

 that it will ba in our power to mMerially shapa our future, 

 notwithstanding. When we were only a department I think we 

 all felt the advantage of these annual meetings, of the profitable 

 discussion, formal and informal, and of the privilege of meeting 

 so many of our foreign brethren who hive so generously 

 supported us by their presence and sympathy. 



I am anxious, then, to suggest that we should conduct our 

 proceedings on as broad Unas as possible. I do not think we 

 should be too ready to encourage pipers which may well hi 

 communicated to societies, either local or central. 



The field is large ; the labourers as they advance in life can 

 hardly esji-'ct to keep pice with all that is going on in it. We 

 must look to individual members of our number to help us by 

 informing and stimulating addresses on subjects they have nude 

 peculiarly their own, or on important researches on which they 

 have been specially engaged. 



Nomenclature. 



There is one subject upon which, from my official po;ition 

 elsewhere, I desire to take the opportunity of saying a few 

 words. It is that of Nomenclature. It is not on its technical 

 side, I am afraid, of sufficient general interest to justify my 

 devoting to it the sp,ice wdiich its importance would otherwise 

 deserve. But I hope to be able to enlist your support for the 

 broad common-sense principles on which our practice should 

 rest. 



As I suppose, every one knows we owe our present method of 

 nomenclature in natural history to Linmus. He devised the 

 binominal, or, as it is often absurdly called, the binomial 

 system. That we must have a technical system of nomenclature 

 I suppo.se no one here will dispute. It is not, however, always 

 admitted by popular writers who have not appreciated the 

 difiiculty of the matter, and who think all nanus should be in 

 the vernacular. There is the obvious difficulty that the v.ast 

 majority of plants do not possess any names at all, and the 

 attempts to manufacture them in a popular shape have met with 

 but little success. Then, from lack of discriminating power on 

 the part of those who use them, vernacular names are often 

 ambiguous ; thus Bullrush is applied equally to Typha and to 

 Scirpus, plants extremidy different. Vernacular names, again, 

 are only of local utility, while the Linnean system is intelligible 

 throughout the world. 



.\ technical name, then, for a plant or animal is a necessity. 

 as without it we cannot fix the object of our investigations into 

 its affinity, structure, or properties (" Linn. Phil.," 210). 

 " Nomina si nescis peril et cognito rerum." 



In order lo get clear ideas on the nutter let us look at the 



