PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 733 



thousandth part of the revenue arising from the export-tax on coal would amplj 

 suffice for the purpose. Indeed, I can think of no more appropriate way ot 

 celebrating the abolition of that burdensome impost. 



If I have dwelt to-day on the seed to the exclusion of other features, it is 

 because I am convinced of its supreme importance. The evolution of the seed 

 must have been one of the most pregnant new departures ever inaugurated by 

 plants. The revelations of the last few years afford us, it is true, but the merest 

 glimpse of the first stage reached, the rise of the Pteridosperms. The conquest of 

 the world must have been slow then as it is now. The great forests of Lepido- 

 dendrons and Calamites were not reduced all at ouce to mere Lycopodiums and 

 Equisetums. In this prolonged struggle, even if the Lycopods never produced a 

 race to share the spoils, as some suppose, theie is the evidence of Lepxdocarpon 

 that their reproductive methods underwent a certain if ineffectual modification in 

 the same direction as their eventual supplanters. Probably the seed plants asserted 

 themselves wherever physical changes overwhelmed old habitats. The rise and 

 fall of the land, so great a feature in Carboniferous times, would favour the younger 

 group. For as new ground became available for colonisation there ■Rould be 

 opportunity of competing on at least equal terms with the effete types that 

 cumbered the forest land. Nor should we forget that the seeds were well 

 equipped with dispersal-mechanisms almost as varied as they are to-day. 



A somewhat similar struggle is now in progress between the Angiosperms and 

 Gymnosperms, but so slowly that we hardly notice it. A future age may have 

 to be content to know its Gymnosperms from dwarf forms like those which the 

 Japanese are so fond of producing in their pot-cultivations! But perhaps all 

 calculations will be upset by the more effective intervention of the human race. 

 On present indications the vegetation of the future should consist of cultivated 

 crops and the weeds that accompany them ; that is, unless the Chemist or 

 Bacteriologist comes to our aid and solves the problem on othei- lines. 



Botany in England. 



I now turn toother matters. The period of twenty-five yet rs that has elapsed 

 since the British Association last met in this City all but includes the rise of modern 

 botany in this country. During the middle decades of last century our botanists 

 were occupied with arranging and describing the countless collections of new 

 plants that poured in from every quarter of an expanding empire. The methods 

 inculcated by Linnaeus and the other great taxonomists of the eighteenth centurv 

 had taken deep root with us and choked out all other influences. Schleiden's 

 ' Principles of Botany,' which marked a great awakening elsewhere, failed to 

 arouse us. The great results of Von Mohl, Hofmeister, Niigeli, and so many other 

 notable workers, which practically transformed botany, were at first without 

 visible effect. 



It was not that we were lacking in men capable of appreciating the newer work. 

 Henfrey, Dr. Lankester (the father of our President), not to mention others, were 

 continually bringing these results before societies, writing about them in the 

 journals, and translating books. But the thing never caught on — it would have 

 been surprising if it had. You may write and talk to your contemporaries to your 

 heart's content, and leave no lasting impression. The schools were not ready. 

 No movement of the sort could take root without the means of enlisting the 

 sympathies of the rising generation. It was only in the seventies that effective 

 steps were taken to place botany on the higher platform ; and the service ren- 

 dered in this connection by Thiselton-Dyer and "Vines is within the knowledge of 

 us all. Like the former in London, so the latter at Cambridge aroused great 

 enthusiasm by his admirable courses of lectures. Great service, too, was rendered 

 by the Clarendon Press, which diffused excellent translations of the best Conti- 

 nental text-books — a policy which it still pursues with unabated vigour, though 

 the need is, I hope, less urgent now than formerly. Already at the time 

 of the last meeting in York (1881) a select band of Englishmen were at work 

 upon original investigations of the modern kind. The individuals who formed 



