TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. 681 



full application. It has not yet rendered the State service as it ought, and as was 

 done by the taxonomic teaching it supplanted. 



It is from this point of view that I wish to point out to you to-day that 

 tlirougli forestry — and although I have particularly dealt with this branch of Rural 

 Economy, what I say is equally true of horticulture and agriculture — modern 

 botanical study should find a sphere of application by which it may contribute to 

 our national well-being, and which would have a directive influence upon its 

 teaching, taking it out of the groove in which it tends to run. AVhat we botanists 

 need to do in this connection is to teach and to study our subject from a wider 

 platform than that of the mere details of individual form, and to encourage our 

 pupils to study plant-life not merely in water-cultures in the laboratory, but in the 

 broader aspects exhibited in the competitive field of Nature. 



If forestry is ever to thrive in Britain botanists must lay the foundation for it 

 in this way. We cannot expect to make our pupils foresters, nor can they yet 

 get the practical instruction they require in Britain. In this we must depend 

 yet a while on Continental schools ; the stream of Continental migration, which 

 needs no longer to flow in morphological and physiological channels, must now 

 turn in the direction of forest schools. But we can so mould tlieir studies and 

 give bias to their work as will put theni on the track of this practical subject. If 

 we had only a few men so trained as competent foresters, and capable of teaching 

 forestry, there would be an efficient corps with which to carry on the crusade 

 against ignorance and indiifereuce, the overcoming of which will be the prelude to 

 the organisation of forestry schools and scientific sylviculture in Britain. The 

 influence of the individual counts for much in a case like this. The advent of a 

 capable man started forestry teaching in Scotland, which years of talk had not 

 succeeded in doing. And so it will be elsewhere. 



I have endeavoured, thus briefly, to sketch the position, the needs, and the 

 prospects of forestry in Britain. Its vast importance as a national question must 

 sooner or later be recognised. It is a subject of growing interest. Its elements 

 are complex, and it touches large social problems ; but the whole question 

 ultimately resolves itself into one of the application of science. To botanists 

 we must look in the first instance for the propagation of the scientific knowledge 

 upon which this large industry must rest. They must be the apostles of forestry. 

 And forestry in turn will react upon their treatment of botany. Botany cannot 

 thrive in a purely introspective atmosphere. It can only live by keeping in touch 

 with the national life, and the path by which it may at the present time best do 

 this is that ottered by forestry. 



The Section was then divided into two Departmects: (1) Zoology, (2) Botany. 



Department of Zoology. 



The following Papers were read: — 



1. On the Didermic Blastocyst of the Mammalia. 

 B)j Professor A. W. W. Hui3RKcnT, LL.D. 



It is a fact that about the simple and early didermic stage of the mam- 

 malian blastocyst very divergent views are at the present moment held by 

 difl'erent observers. Only lately an English embryologist, who with great technical 

 skill has considerably added to our knowledge of the development of the mouse, 

 brought forward certain ingenious speculations concerning this didermic stage in 

 other mammals besides those with which he was personally acquainted. The author 

 referred to Ur. Ilobinsou's paper in vol. xxxiii. of the ' Quarterly Journal of 

 Microscopical Science.' 



According to these views the outer layer of the monodermic blastocyst is in 

 reality a hypoblastic layer. The didermic phase essentially originates out of this 



