August i6, 1894] 



NATURE 



2,77 



relation to its useful applications which had in the first instance 

 given it birth, and had become little more than a dry system of 

 nomenclature. 



The reaciion of a quarter of a century ago, which we owe to 

 the direct teaching of Sachs and De liary and the influence of 

 Darwin, many of us can remember ; in it some who are here to- 

 day had a share. .Seldom I think is a revolution in method and 

 ideas of teaching and study so rapidly brought about as it was 

 in this instance. The morphological and physiological aspect 

 of the subject infused a vitality into the botanical work which it 

 much needed. The biological features of the plant-world re- 

 placed technical diagnosis and description as the aim of teachers 

 and workers in this tield of science. No weightier illustration 

 of Ihe limeliness of this change could be found than in the atti- 

 tude of medicine. But a few years ago he would have been rash 

 who would predict that botany would for long continue to be 

 recognised as a part of university training essential to medical 

 students. Its utility as ancillary to materia medica had lost 

 point through the removal of pharmacy from the functions of the 

 physician. But what do we see now ? Not the exclusion 

 of botany from the university curriculum of medical study, but 

 the recognition to such an extent of the fundamental character 

 of the problems of plant-life, that it is now introduced into the 

 requirements of the colleges. 



15ut if the old taxonomic teaching was stifled by it; nomen- 

 clature, there is, it seems to me, a similar element of danger in 

 our modern leaching, lest it be strangled by its terminology. 

 The same causes are operative as of old. The same tendency 

 to narrowing of the field of vision, which eventuates in mis- 

 taking the name for Ihe ihing, is apparent. With the ou-ting 

 of taxonomy, and as the laboratory replaced the garden and 

 museum, the compound microscope succeed; d the hand- lens, 

 and for the paraphernalia of the sybtematist came the stains, 

 reagents, and apparatus of microscopical and experimental work 

 as the equipment necessary fur ihe study of plants, the inwards 

 rather than the outwards of plains have come to form the bulk 

 of the subject matter of our teaching, and we are concerned 

 now more with the stone and mortar than with the general 

 architecture and plan of the fatiric ; we are inclined to elaborate 

 the minute details of a part at the expense of its relation to the 

 whole organism, and discuss the technique of a function more in 

 the light of an illuitration of certain chemical and physical [ 

 changes than as a vital phenomenon of importance to the plant 

 and us surroundings. This mechanical attitude is quite a 

 natural growth. It is a consequence of specialisation, and it is 

 reflected in our research. Hut it must be counteracted if botany 

 is in the future to be aught else than an academic study, as it 

 was of old an elegant accomplishment. It has come about 

 very much because of that want of recognition by botanists, to 

 which I have already referred, of the natural outlets of their 

 study — of their failure so far to see the lines through which the 

 subject touches the national life. Modern botany has not yet 

 found in this country its full application. It has not yet rendered 

 the State service as it ought, and as was done by the taxonomic 

 teaching it supplanted. 



It is from this point of view that I wish to point out to you 

 to-day that through forestry — and although I have particularly 

 dealt with this branch of Rural Kconomy, what I say is equally 

 true of horticulture and agriculture — modern botanical study 

 should find a sphere of application by which it may contribute 

 to our national well-being, and which would have a directive 

 Influence upon its teaching, taking it out of the groove in which 

 i' tends to run. What we botanists need to do in this connec- 

 ion is to teach and to study our subject from a wider platform 

 than that of the mere details of individual form, and to en- 

 courage our pupils to study plant-life not merely in water- 

 cultures in the laboratory, but in the broader aspects exhibited 

 in the competitive field ol nature. 



If forestry is ever to thrive in Britain, botanists must lay the 

 foundation for it in this way. We cannot expect to make our 

 pupils foresters, nor can they yet get the practical instruction 

 they require in Britain. In this we must depend yet a while on 

 continental schools ; the stream of continental migration, which 

 needs no longer to flow in morphological and physiological 

 channels, must now turn in the direction of forest schools. But 

 we can so mould their studies and give bias to their work as 

 will put them on the track of this practical subject. If we had 

 only a few men so trained as competent foresters, and capable 

 of teaching forestry, there would be an elTicient corps with 

 which to carry on the crusade against ignorance and indiffer- 



ence, the overcoming of which will be the prelude to the 

 organisation of forestry schools and scientific sylviculture in 

 Britain. The influence of the individual counts for much in a 

 case like this. The advent of a capable man started forestry 

 teaching in Scotland, which years of talk had not succeeded in 

 doing. And so it will be ebewhere 



I have endeavoured, thus briefly, to sketch the position, 

 the needs, and the prospects of forestry in Britain. Its vast 

 importance as a national question must sooner or later be 

 recognised. It is a subject of growing interest. Its elements 

 are complex, and it touches large social problems ; but the 

 whole question ultimately resolves itself into one of the applica- 

 tion of science. To botanists we must look in the first instance 

 for the propagation of the scientific knowledge upon which this 

 large industry must rest. They must be the apostles of forestry. 

 And forestry in turn will react upon their treatment of botany. 

 Botany cannot thrive in a purely introspective atmosphere It 

 can only live by keeping in touch with the national life, and 

 the path by which it may at the present time best do this is 

 that offered by forestry, 



SECTION E. 



GEOGRAPHY. 



Opening Address by Capt,\in W. J. L. Wharton, 

 R.N., F.R.S., President of the Section. 



You will not be surprised if, having called upon an hydro- 

 grapher to preside over this Section, he takes for the subject of 

 his review the Sea. Less apparently interesting, by reason of 

 the uniformity of its surface, than the land which raises itself 

 above the level of the waters, and with which the term 

 geography is more generally associated, the ocean has, never- 

 theless, received much attention of later years. In Great 

 Britain, especially, which has so long rested its position among 

 the nations upon the wealth which our merchant fleets bring 

 to its shores, and upon the facilities which the sea affords for 

 communication with our numerous possessions all over the 

 globe, investigation into the mysteries, whetherof its ever moving 

 surface or of its more hidden depths, has been particularly 

 fascinating. I purpose, therefore, to attempt a brief survey of 

 our present knowledge of its physical condition. 



The very bulk of the ocean, as compared with that of the 

 visible land, gives it an importance which is possessed by no 

 other feature on the surface of our planet. Mr. John Murray, 

 after a laborious compulation, has shown that its cubical extent 

 is probably about fourteen times that of the dry land. This 

 statement appeals strongly to the imagination, and forms, 

 perhap'-', the most powerful argument in favour of the view, 

 steadily gaining ground, that the great oceans have in the main 

 existed in the form in which we now see them since the 

 constituents of the earth settled down into their present 

 condition. 



When it is considered that the whole of the dry land would 

 only fill up one third of the .\tlantic Ocean, the enormous dis- 

 proportion of the two great divisions of land and sea becomes 

 very apparent. 



The most obvious phenomenon of the ocean is the constant 

 horizontal movement of its surface waters, which in many pans 

 take well-defined directions. These great ocean currents have 

 now been studied for many years, and our knowledge of them 

 is approaching a point beyond which it is doubtful whether we 

 shall ever much advance, except in small details. For though, 

 while indisputably the waters continually move in each great area 

 in generally the same direction, the velocities vary, the limits 

 of the difl^erent streams and drifts vary, mainly from the ever- 

 varying force and direction of the winds. 



After long hesitation and much argument, I think it may be 

 now safely held that the prime motor of the surface currents 

 is the wind. Kot, by any means, the wind that may blow, and 

 even persistently blow, over the portion of water that is 

 moving, more or less rapidly, in any direction, but the great 

 winds which blow generally from the same general quarter over 

 vast areas. These, combined with deflection from the land, 

 settle the main surface circulation. 



I do not know if any of my hearers may hive seen a very 

 remarkable model, devised by .\Ir. Clayden, in which water 

 disposed over an area shaped like the .Atlantic, and sprinkled 

 over with lycopodium dust to make movement apparen', was 

 subjected to air impelled from various nozzles, representing the 



NO. 1294, VOL. 50] 



