PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



and peculiar to tliem. This indicates a very ancient flora, 

 and that it may have originated in a much more extensive 

 area than tliese islands at present possess. The newer part ot 

 the flora possesses aflinities with that of South America. It 

 has been shown that seeds may be transmitted long distances by 

 the waves, by birds, or by the winds. Arctic plants are trans- 

 mitted by ranges of mountains. Some floras, for instance that 

 of the Old World, seem to have a power of emigration and 

 settlement similar to that of men of European origin. Sir J. 

 Hooker traces the vegetation of Scandinavia from Lapland, by 

 way of the Alps, the Caucasus, the Himalayas, and the 

 mountains of the peninsula of India, to the Malayan Archi- 

 pelago — and after a considerable Inatus to appear again on the 

 Alps of New South Wales and Tasmania, in rapidly diminishing 

 numbers it is true, but in vigorous development throughout. 

 It matters not what the vegetation of the bases and flanks of 

 the mountains may be, the Scandinavian asserts its prerogative 

 of ubiquity from Britain to the Antipodes. This study of 

 botanical geography, and the deductions that may be made from 

 it, is becoming a question of the deepest interest in the 

 researches of naturalists. It is so wide that it embraces the 

 whole history of the past in geological times as well as in 

 recent, and yet within the scope of a county a Botanist may find 

 an ample field for investigations, as Mr. Bagnall has so ably 

 shown us. 



To those who are not interested in such far-reaching 

 investigations, and to whom strictly technical Botany is also 

 unattractive, glimpses into such secrets of Nature as the 

 relationships of insects and flowers, may jprove attractive. Every 

 one knows why bees require flowers, but they may not know 

 why flowers require bees. The flowers of many plants are self- 

 fertilizing — that is, the pollen falls upon the stigmas when the 

 latter are in a fit and mature condition to receive it. On the 

 other hand, in many cases, either the one or the other of these 

 organs matures a day or two the earlier. Such is the case in 

 the common arum, now about to flower. The wide green 



