10 11EP0RT~1881. 



being robbed of tlieir honey by ants. Again, more than a century ago, 

 our countryman, Ellis, described an American plant, Dionaja, in which the 

 leaves are somewhat concave, with long lateral spines, and a joint in the 

 middle, which closes up with a jerk, like a rat-trap, the moment any 

 unwaiy insect alights on them. The plant, in fact, actually captures and 

 devours insects. This observation also remained as an isolated fact until 

 within the last few years, when Darwin, Hooker, and others have shown 

 that many other species have curious and very varied contrivances for 

 supplying themselves with animal food. 



As regards the progress of botany in other directions, Mr. Thiselton 

 Dyer has been kind enough to assist me in endeavouring to place the 

 principal facts before you. Some of the most fascinating branches of botany 

 — morphology, histology, and physiology scarcely existed before 1830. In 

 the two former branches the discoveries of von Mohl are pre-eminent. Ho 

 first obsei'ved cell-division in 1835, and detected the presence of starch 

 in chlorophyll-corpuscles in 1837, while he first described protoplasm, now 

 so familiar to us, at least by name, in 184G. In the same year Amici 

 discovered the existence of the embryonic vesicle in the embryo sac, 

 which develops into the embryo when fertilised by the entrance of the 

 pollen-tube into the micropyle. The existence of sexual reproduction 

 in the lower plants was doubtful, or at least doubted by some eminent 

 authorities, as recently as 1853, when the actual process of fei'tilisatioii 

 in the common bladderwrack of our shores was observed by Thuret, 

 while the I'eproduction of the larger fungi was first worked out by Dc 

 Bary in 1863. 



As regards lichens', Schwendener proposed, in 1869, the startling 

 theory, now however accepted by some of the highest authorities, that 

 lichens are not autonomous organisms, but commensal associations of a 

 fungus parasitic on an alga. "With reference to the higher Cryptogams it 

 is hardly too much to say that the whole of our exact knowledge of their 

 life-history has been obtained during the last half-century. Thus in the 

 case of ferns the male organs, or antheridia, were first discovered by 

 Njigeli in 1844, and the archegonia, or female organs, by Suminski in 

 1848. The early stages in the development of mosses were worked out 

 by Valentine in 1833. Lastly, the principle of Alternation of Generations 

 in plants was discovered by Hofmeister. This eminent naturalist also, 

 in 1851-4, pointed out the homologies of the reproductive processes in 

 mosses, vascular cryptogams, gymnosperms, and angiosperms. 



Geographical Botany can hardly be said to have had any scientific 

 status anterior to the publication of the ' Origin of Species.' The way 

 had been paved, however, by A. de Candolle and the well-known essay 

 of Edward Forbes — ' On the Distribution of the Plants and Animals 

 of the British Isles,' — by Sir J. Hooker's introductory essay to the 

 ' Flora of New Zealand,' and by Hooker and Thomson's introductory 

 essay to the ' Flora Indica.' One result of these researches has been to 

 give the coujJ-de-grdcG to the theory of an Atlantis. Lastly, in a lecture 



