674 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K. 
Section K.—BOTANY. 
PRESIDENT OF THE SxctTION.—Professor J. B. Farmer, M.A., F.RB.S. 
THURSDAY, AUGUST 1. 
The President delivered the following Address :— 
Custom has decreed that those who are charged with the responsibilities that 
to-day fall to my lot should endeavour to address themselves to the consideration 
of matters such as they may deem to be of advantage to others, or, at any rate, 
of interest to themselves. It is not, perhaps, always easy to combine these two 
courses, and if I choose the less altruistic one I experience the smaller com- 
punction in doing so because the undisturbed repose that most Addresses enjoy 
when they have been decently put away between the covers of our Annual 
Report seems to indicate that an attempt to express the passing thought, however 
ephemeral its interest, may not be the worst introduction to the business of the 
advancement of our science. 
Any attempt to give a survey of the progress and present position of botanical 
science, even were so large a task at all within my power, has almost ceased to 
be necessary, owing to the enterprise which has so admirably provided for its 
adequate fulfilment elsewhere. I propose, therefore, to try to put together, in a 
form as intelligible as I can, the result of reflections on some of the aspects of 
botany that are often not seriously regarded ; perhaps because they belong rather 
to the nebulous region of speculation than to the hard (and sometimes dry) 
ground of accepted fact. 
J am by no means blind to the risks incurred in venturing on such a course, 
but I believe that a glance directed, however imperfectly, towards some of the 
less obvious sides of our science may not be altogether futile, even though the 
attempts should evoke the criticism :— 
Dum vitat humum, nubes et inania captat. 
The problems that confront us as botanists are far more numerous and far 
more complex than formerly. We are attached to a science that is rapidly 
growing, and this rapid advance is carrying with it a process of corresponding 
differentiation. Some years ago a danger arose, even within this Association, 
that we might have replaced differentiation, that quality which distinguishes the 
higher organisms, by a process of fission which is more characteristic of the 
lower ranks of life. 
The products of the threatened fission would doubtless have pursued divergent 
paths, and the botanist of to-day would have been the poorer for it. He would 
have been lost to physiology, and all that physiology implies. Happily that 
danger was averted; and to our lasting advantage as members of the botanical 
organism our science escaped disruption, and physiological investigation still 
continues both to inspire, and to be aided by, other branches of botanical research. 
A physiological conception of morphological phenomena is the one that to me 
_——_ —eek&F,_,_, as 
