PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 737 



considerable supply of recruits in the form of advanced students possessing the 

 requisite training to carry out investigations under direction. And if this be true 

 of the herbaria, it holds equally in all the branches of knowledge represented in 

 the National Museum. Really I fancy our Museum is rather anomalous in its 

 isolation. I am confident that any understanding or arrangement that might be 

 reached would be attended with great reciprocal advantage. Nor am I speaking 

 without some data before me. The movement towards a closer relation between 

 the museum and the university has already entered the experimental stage. For 

 on several occasions during the last few years members of the Museum staff, from 

 more than one department, have given courses of lectures in connection with the 

 university schemes of advanced study. From all I hear, the experiment may be 

 regarded as distinctly encouraging. 



Before leaving this subject it may be appropriate to recall that the English 

 edition of Solereder's great work on Systematic Plant-anatomy is rapidly 

 approaching completion, and should be available very shortly. Its appearance 

 caiuiot fail once more to arouse discussion as to the importance of anatomical 

 characters. I hope the result produced may reward the devotion and labour with 

 which Mr. L. A. Boodle and Dr. Fritsch have carried out their task. 



In another and even more fundamental branch of systematic work the future 

 seems brimful of promise. We are beginning to recognisei that a vast num- 

 ber of the species of the systematist have no correspondence with the real 

 units of nature, but are to be regarded rather as subjective groups or plexuses 

 composed of closely similar units which possess a wide range of overlapping 

 variability. That such might be the case was apparent to Linnaeus, but the proof 

 depends on the application of precise methods of analysis. 



In the year 1870 our great taxonomist Bentham happened to meet Nageli at 

 Munich, and, as we find recorded in Mr. Daydon Jackson's interesting life, ' had half 

 an hour's conversation with him on his views that in systematic botany it is better 

 to spend years in studying thoroughly two or three species, and thus really to 

 contribute essentially to the science, than to review generally floras and groups of 

 species.' Bentham does not appear to have been convinced, for his comment runs : 

 ' He is otherwise, evidently, a man of great ability and zeal, and a constant and 

 hard worker.' At the time of this interview Bentham was seventy years old, 

 Nageli being seventeen years his junior. The views of the latter are now bearing 

 fruit, as we see in the important results already obtained by De Vries and others, 

 who are following the methods of experimental cultivation with so much success. 



The supposed slowness of change has been a difficulty to many. This was one 

 of the ' lions ' left by Darwin in the way, and it has driven back many a ' Timo- 

 rous ' and ' Mistrust.' Now, as we begin to perceive, it is only a chained lion 

 after all ; a thing to avoid and pars by. The detection of the origin of species and 

 varieties by sudden mutation opens out new vistas to the systematist, and along 

 these he will pursue his way. It will take many years of arduous work, this 

 reinvestigation of the species question. The collections of our herbaria form the 

 provisional sorting-out from which we must start afresh. In the long run it may 

 be that our present collections will prove obsolete, but that will not deter us. 

 The scrap-heap is the sign and measure of all progress. 



The garden thus becomes an instrument of supreme importance in conjunction 

 with the herbarium, and that is another reason for the transfer of South Kensington 

 to Kew. The resources of the latter could then be directed more fully than ever to 

 the advancement of scientific botany, and the gardens will be revealed in a new light. 

 For the operations and results of experimental inquiries would form a new feature, 

 very acceptable to the specialist and public alike. And, as I am on the subject, it 

 may not be out of place to remark that we all look forward eagerly to the time 

 when the multifarious activities of Kew will permit the development of other 

 features of which traces are already discernible. The arrangement of the living 

 collections is at present based largely on horticultural couvenience, geographic 

 origin and systematic affinity, happily subordinated to an artistic or decorative 

 treatment. In time we shall go iurther than that and attempt in some degree to 

 reflect current botanical ideas in the grouping of our plants. Let me illustrate my 



1906. 3 B 



