34 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 
situated in the great commercial centres, and devote themselves rather to 
the spreading of a knowledge of the lands beyond the seas than to the 
study of local British geography. Here again I must make a partial 
exception in the case of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society at 
Edinburgh ; but J think that I have not misrepresented the very valuable 
aims and work of the Societies at Southampton, Manchester, Liverpool, 
and Neweastle, or of the branches of the Scottish Society at Glasgow, 
Aberdeen, and Dundee. In course of time the geographical teachers in 
our old and new universities may no doubt come to our aid, but there are 
wide areas of our country which have no university, or none sufliciently 
developed as at present to afford a Chair in Geography. For some time 
to come I see no agencies which can cover the United Kingdom con- 
sistently with centres of geographical study, unless they are to be found 
in the Societies which you represent. 
Let me now give a first indication of the nature of the work which I 
am proposing. Many of your societies have members interested in botany, 
and in your publications there are not a few valuable memoirs dealing 
with the distribution of plant species. That of course was a very neces- 
sary study, but we are now developing a different study, whose object is 
to ascertain the distribution of what are known as plant associations. 
For instance, in the twenty-first and twenty-second volumes of the 
‘Geographical Journal’ you will find maps showing the distribution of 
the plant associations of Yorkshire, which have been compiled from the 
researches of Mr. William G. Smith and others who have assisted him. 
Here you will see carefully mapped by Bartholomew the distribution of 
the various moorland , woodland, and farmland associations. For instance, 
under the head of moorlands you will find distinguished upon the map the 
bilberry summits, the cotton-grass bogs, the heather moors, the grass 
heaths, the natural pastures, and the lowland swamps. In each of these 
associations there are several characteristic plants, which occur together 
and very rarely apart—a fact which is obvious to anyone who con- 
trasts the trees and undergrowth which constitute an oak wood with those 
which constitute a beech wood. Primarily, of course, the distribution 
of these associations is due to differences of climate and soil, but also 
it must be remembered that the dominant plants themselves form the 
required environment of the minor species associated with them. I com- 
mend to you the study of these maps themselves, for they will give you a 
far better idea of the nature and value of this kind of botanical geography 
than any mere description of mine. Admirable examples of the same kind 
of work are the memoirs and maps of the late Mr. Robert Smith, published 
in the sixteenth volume of the ‘ Scottish Geographical Magazine’ under the 
title of ‘A Botanical Survey of Scotland.’ Results of this nature, I may 
point out, are however comparatively useless unless the different parts 
of the country are mapped according to a more or less uniform scheme ; 
hence the value of the lead which such a conference as this may give to 
local societies. 
The distribution, however, of plant associations is of comparatively 
little value when studied alone. We require for its interpretation a 
knowledge of the local land forms and drainage systems, of local drift 
geology, of local climate, and many other local data which can be ex- 
pressed upon maps. The geographical method of research is to construct 
with scrupulous care separate maps of each of these orders of phenomena, 
and then to compare them, when correlations of distribution will leap to 
