TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K. 837 



difficult to realise that this may he within the recollection of some who are now 

 living amongst us. It is, however, of peculiar interest to me that the first person 

 who actually distinguished this all-important body, and indicated it in a figure, 

 was Francis Bauer, thirty years earlier, in 1802. This remarkahle man, whose 

 skill in applying the resources of art to the illustration of plant anatomy has never, 

 I suppose, been surpassed, was ' resident draughtsman for fifty years to the Royal 

 Botanic Garden at Kew.' And it was at Kew, and in a tropical orchid, Phaius 

 grandifolius, no doubt grown there, that the discovery was made. 



It was, [ confess, with no little admiration that, on refreshing my memory by a 

 reference to Robert Brown's paper, I read again the vivid account which he gives 

 in a footnote of the phenomena, so painfully familiar to many of us who have been 

 teachers, exhibited in the staminal hair of Tradescantia. Sir Joseph Hooker > has 

 well remarked that ' the supreme importance of this observation, . . . leading to 

 undreamt-of conceptions of the fundamental phenomena of organic life, is acknow- 

 ledged by all investigators.' It is singular that so profound an observer as Robert 

 Brown should have himself missed the significance of what he saw. The world 

 had to wait for the discovery of protoplasm by Von Mohl till 1846, and till 1850 

 for its identification with the sarcode of zoologists by Cohn, who is still, I am 

 happy to say, living and at work, and to whom last year the Linnean Society did 

 itself the honour of presenting its medal. 



The Edinburgh meeting of the Association, in 1834, was the occasion of the 

 announcement of another memorable discovery of Robert Brown's. I will content 

 myself with quoting Hofmeister's ^ account of it. ' Robert Brown was the dis- 

 coverer of the polyembrony of the Coniferce. In a later treatise he pointed out the 

 origin of the pro-embryo in large cells of the endosperm, to which he gave the 

 name ofcorpuscula.' The period of the forties, just half a century ago, looks in the 

 retrospect as one of almost dazzling discovery. To say nothing of the formal ap- 

 pearance of protoplasm on the scene, the foundations were being laid in all direc- 

 tions of our modern botanical morphology. Yet its contemporaries viewed it with 

 a very philosophical calm. Thwaites, who regarded Carpenter as his master, 

 described at the Oxford meeting in 1847 the conjugation of the Diatomace(B , and 

 ' distinctly indicated,' as Carpenter^ says, ' that conjugation is the primitive phase 

 of sexual reproduction.' Berkeley informed me that the announcement fell per- 

 fectly flat. A year or two later Suminski came to London with his splendid 

 discovery (1848) of the archegonia of the fern, the antheridia having been 

 first seen by Niigeli in 1844. Carpenter * gave me, many years after, a curious 

 account of its reception. ' At the Council of the Ray Society, at which,' 

 he said, 'I advocated the reproduction of Suminski's book on the "Ferns," I 

 was assured that the close resemblance of the antherozoids to spermatozoa 

 was quite sufiicient proof that they could have nothing to do with vegetable 

 reproduction. ' I do not think,' he added — and the complaint is pathetic — ' that 

 the men of the present generation, who have been brought up in the light, quite 

 apprehend (in this as in other matters) the utter darkness in which we were then 

 groping, or fully recognise the deserts of those who helped them to what they now 

 enjoy.' This was in 1875, and I suppose is not likely to be less true now. 



The Oxford Meeting in 1860 was the scene of the memorable debate on the 

 origin of species, at which it is interesting to remember that Henslow presided. 

 On that occasion Section D reached its meridian. The battle was Homeric. How- 

 ever little to the taste of its author, the launching of his great theory was, at any 

 rate, dignified with a not inconsiderable explosion. It may be that it is not given 

 to the men of our day to ruffle the dull level of public placidity with disturbing 

 and far-reaching ideas. But if it were, I doubt whether we have, or need now, 

 the tierce energy which inspired then either the attack or the defence. When we 

 met again in Oxford last year the champion of the old conflict stood in the place of 

 honour, acclaimed of all men, a beautiful and venerable figure. We did not know 

 then that that was to be his farewell. 



The battle was not in vain. Six years afterwards, at Nottingham, Sir Joseph 



' Proc. Linn. Soc, 1887-88, 65. ^ Eiglier Cryptogamia, 432. 



* Memorial Sketch, 140. * Loe. cit., 141. 



