BOTANICAL GAZETTE 
SEPTEMBER, 1894. 
The evolution of the Hepatice. 
Vice-presidential address before section G, A. A. A.S. 
LUCIEN M. UNDERWOOD. 
There is, perhaps, a natural tendency among specialists to 
magnify the importance of the particular subject or group of 
life forms in which they happen to be specially interested. 
The horticultural botanist, dreaming of the time when the 
world will be reorganized through the products of his art, is 
Prone to see nothing beyond utility and ornament in plants, 
and it becomes a part of his nature to see some useful char- 
acter in forms of vegetation which to others are devoid of 
either beauty or utility. The economic mycologist, over-im- 
pressed with the magnitude of the losses sustained by the un- 
fortunate agriculturist and fruit grower, is haunted in sleep 
with visions of anthracnose and mildew, and in his waking 
hours sees little in botany but host-plants bristling with par- 
asites and Bordeaux mixtures certain to relieve them of their 
incubus. The man with inherent, if not coherent, proclivi- 
tes for priority, with a war-like temperament and a strong 
tendency to cross lances, sees in botany one vast battle field 
of synonymy in which cohorts of pre-Linnaean binomials, 
hordes of decapitalization dogmas, hostile homonyms an 
Kuntzian curiosities charge down upon each other in battal-° 
‘ons, form and reform in utter confusion. There are some 
Microscopic botanists whose degree of specialization never 
Permits them to look outside the limits of an apical cell; an 
others still whose botanical horizon is bounded by the field of 
an immersion lens and whose azimuth and right ascension are 
apn within its limits. We are all more or less range 
ini ...- Our own hobbies in public places, so in performing t 
— function of this office, I can perhaps do no better than 
bring forth mine. In this way, I shall at least be in touch 
. with present custom. 
27—Vol, XIX. —No. 6. 
