550 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K. 



Section K.— BOTANY. 

 President of the Section. — Professor F. E. Weiss, D.Sc. 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 31. 



The President delivered the following Address : — ■ 



Greatly as I prize the honour done me by the Council of the British Association 

 in electing me. to the office of President of the Botanical Section, my gratifica- 

 tion has been heightened by the knowledge that the meetings of this section 

 would be graced by the presence of the distinguished group of Continental and 

 American botanists who have just taken part in the International Phytogeo- 

 graphical Excursion to the British Isles. 



I am sure that I am voicing the unanimous feeling of the Section in offering 

 them a hearty welcome to our deliberations, and, in conveying to them our sense 

 of the honour they have done us by their acceptance of the invitation of this 

 Association, I would like to express our hope that by their participation in our 

 proceedings they will help us to promote the advancement of botanical science, 

 for which purpose we are met together. 



In view of these special circumstances under which we foregather, it may 

 seem inappropriate if I deal, as I shall be doing, in my Presidential Address 

 mainly with fossil plants, with the study of which I have been for some time 

 occupied ; but I need hardly assure our visitors that, while we entertain some 

 feelings of satisfaction at the contributions made during the past half-century 

 towards our knowledge of extinct flora of Britain, yet, as the later sittings of this 

 Section will show, and as they have no doubt realised during their peregrinations 

 through this country, our botanical sympathies and energies are by no means 

 limited to this branch of botanical study. Moreover, I hope during the course 

 of my address to point out the ecological interest which is afforded by certain 

 aspects of Palaeobotany. 



On the sure foundations laid by my revered predecessor, the late Professor 

 Williamson, so vast a superstructure has been erected by the active work of 

 numerous investigators that I must limit myself in this address to exploring only 

 certain of its recesses, and I shall consequently confine myself to some aspects of 

 Paleobotany which have either not been dealt with in those able expositions of 

 the subject given to this Section by previous occupants of this presidential chair, 

 or which may be 6aid to have passed since then into a period of mutation. 



The great attractiveness of Palseobotany, and the very general interest which 

 has been evinced in botanical circles in the progress of recent investigations into 

 the structure of fossil plants, are due to the light they have thrown upon the 

 relationship and the evolution of various groups of existing plants. It was the 

 lasting achievement of Williamson to have shown, with the active co-operation 

 of many working-men naturalists from the Lancashire and Yorkshire coalfields, 

 that the structure of the coal-measure plants from these districts can be studied 

 in microscopic preparations as effectively as has been the case with recent plants 

 since the days of Grew and Malpighi. Indeed, had Sachs lived to continue his 



