yfthe President of 



251 



reports of the sectional meetings and those other reports which have 

 been suggested or encouraged by the grants of the British Association, 

 will best attest the influence of this Association in the promotion of 

 natural history in general and of home zoology in particular. 



"I cannot utter one or two technical terms which I have lately ad- 

 dressed to the meeting, without adding one passing reference to the 

 great ancient authority from which they are derived ; and which, high 

 as its value is in its proper place in relation to those unchanged sciences 

 of morals and mind, the cultivation of which is the distinguishing object 

 or the academical education of Oxford, is a|so high even in natural 

 science also: for, while the ethics of Aristotle remain the monument 

 ol his profound reason, his claim to eminence as a great observer of 

 natural history remains also, after the experience of two thousand years, 

 unshaken and unalterable. 



U I proceed now to notice the science of Botany; which, aided in 

 these days by the microscope, and by chemistry, as to the structure, 

 junctions and uses of the living plant, and as to the analogies in the 

 vegetable world in its fossil state, presents one of the most inter- 

 esting subjects of inquiry to the student and to the general observer. 



"Systematic botany is constantly receiving additions to the number 

 °f species. 



"In England, with respect, to living plants, for the greater part of the 

 accession to the plants in cultivation during the preceding year we are 

 indebted to Mr. Fortune, the Horticultural Society's collector in China ; 

 who has recently published an account of his mission : and we are not 

 ess indebted to those who, as collectors and correspondents in various 

 parts of the world, communicate the results of their labors to the Royal 

 Botanic Gardens at Kew. That establishment, under the direction of 

 "jy friend, Sir William Jackson Hooker, has unquestionably become 

 the first botanic garden in Europe. I use this expression on the au- 

 thority of another friend whom I have had the privilege of knowing 

 for forty years, whom Humboldt described as le premier Botaniste de 

 [Euroupe, accurate, sagacious, and profound, and whose knowledge 

 jjonly equalled by his modesty. After this, it is not for your sakes 

 bu * my own, that I name Robert Brown ; may I add, in passing, the 

 expression of every one's wish that he would deposit more of his 

 knowledge in print. r T u 



Before I quit the subject of the great institution at Kew, I ought to 

 me ntion as one of the latest accessions to it, a cactus weighing a ton, as 

 s |ated by Sir W. J. Hooker, in his Report laid before Parliament ; who 

 ! dd ?i that the collection of that most singular family, so recently made 

 'aimliar to us, (he refers to the collection at Kew,) « is now unrivalled 

 ln Europe.' 



" With respect to new species of plants received only in the state of 

 ^jecimensfor the herbarium, they have been in pa ^obtained froni 



Th 

 that 



,! *i South America, and New Zealand ; but chiefly from Australia 

 e ! *te expedition into the interior, or at least further into the interior of 

 ' g^at continent than in any other direction had hitherto been made, 



pxpeditions so creditable to the enterprise, perseverance, and intel- 

 'gence of their conductors— have however been but little productive, 

 ,ar as we at present know, in the department of botany. I he ant- 



