662 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K. 
Section K.—BOTANY. 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.—PrRoressor F. Kersur, M.A., Se.D. 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5. 
The President delivered the following Address :— 
Ir is with more than the normal trepidation natural to presidents that I, who 
have worked on the border-lines of several biological sciences, undertake the task 
of addressing the members of this Section. As well might a rogue and snapper- 
up of unconsidered trifles recite his doggerel songs before a bench of learned 
magistrates. 
‘Therefore, although I have studied from their works the ways of presidents, 
and although I shall strive to keep to the path which they have mostly trod, yet 
should I stray I plead with Autolycus that— 
‘When I wander here and there, 
I then do most go right.’ 
The addresses which I have consulted show me two alternative models. 
I may take all knowledge for my province and discourse on the progress of our 
science as a whole. This is Ercles’ vei, a tyrant’s vein. Or as a lover of a 
department of the science and more condoling, I may confine my Address to a 
special branch of Botany. Each method has its merits and its drawbacks, and 
the one is corrective of the other. 
The departmental method depicts the tree of knowledge in sympodial sym- 
metry. ‘The branch which the president of one year holds out for our inspection 
is seen arising from an erstwhile dormant lateral bud far back from the growing 
point of the branch exhibited by his predecessor. Under the magic of the presi- 
dential hands the new branch grows as grows the enchanted mango. Like the lean 
kine it eats up the fat kine, and by the end of the Address it dominates all other 
branches. 
The general method shows the tree in other guise. As an artist is wont to 
paint a tree, so the historian draws it on monopodial lines, with branches standing 
in due subservience to the leader and in strict co-ordination with one another. 
Together these methods tell the truth, which is that the tree of knowledge grows, 
like many another broad-leaved tree, by a-mixed process of monopodial sequences 
following upon sympodial developments. 
What is to the specialist, and indeed for a space is, the luxuriant predominance 
of his branch appears in historical perspective but as a new lateral for the exten- 
sion of all the sub-lateral shoots of science. 
Such a new basis for the further growth of all the branches of Botany is 
provided by the lusty shoot of Mendelism, and after weighing the alternatives, 
and with the reserves announced already, I propose to try to show that this recent 
outgrowth of the tree of knowledge is destined not to mar its symmetry, but 
rather to aid the growth of the whole crown. This, my chief task, should have 
a 
