ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT, 



William Southall, Esq,, F.L,S. 



nELIVKUED AT THE ADJOUHNED ANNUAL MEETINO, APRII. 5, 1881. 



Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen — 



At the commencement of the present session I had the 

 honour to address the Society on taking possession of its new 

 quarters in this noble building. The prospective advantages 

 which I foreshadowed as awaiting us have been amply realised, 

 and I have now only to congratulate our members upon our 

 estabhshed position in rooms so excellent and suitable for the 

 purposes of the Society, which the enlightened liberality of 

 the Council of Mason's College has enabled us to occupy. 



I propose this evening to address you upon the subject of 

 Botany in general, entering a little into its history, and a little 

 into some of its more recent developments, hoping thereby, 

 although I may not follow a strictly scientific path, to interest 

 some who have not hitherto made a study of the second great 

 Kingdom of Organic Life. 



All the world is fond of flowers ; the factory girl of the 

 smoky town, who mostly has to content herself with artificial 

 substitutes, equally with the Hawaiian'-' beauty, who, with 

 exquisite grace, garlands herself with wreaths of the splendid 

 Hibiscus ; the shoemaker, or the grimy smith, who, on his 

 little suburban patch, grows auriculas or carnations for show, 

 equally with the well-got-up gentleman, who goes down to the 

 House of Commons with a bouquet of exotics sent up fi-om his 

 place in the country' in his button-hole. 



The attractions of the woods and the fields depend wholly 

 upon the beauties of the vegetable world, ever present, but 

 changing with the changing seasons, whether in the outbm-st of 



* See " The Earl and the Doctor." 



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