762 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF: SCIENCE.—1912. 
Report of the Conference of Delegates of Corresponding Societies held 
at Dundee, September 5 and 10, 1912. 
Chairman : : : : . Professor F. O. Bower. 
Vice-Chairman : : ‘ «HH. W. T. Wager. 
Secretary ; : : . W. P. D. Stebbing. 
First Meetina, Seplember 5. 
The Chairman, in answer to questions relating to the proper recognition of 
the Conference, put it to the meeting that the names of the delegates and the 
subjects of the papers for discussion should be printed in the day’s Journat, 
as was already done in the cases of the Committees of the Sections and the 
eectional papers. This was approved. 
Mr. Oke, the Rev. T. R. R. Stebbing. Mr. Balfour Browne, and- Mr. Mark 
Sykes having spoken on other matters relating to a more thorough recognition 
of the Conference, it was also agreed that a list of the delegates of the various 
Societies represented at the British Association meetings, with their attend- 
ances, should be printed in the Report of the Conference. 
The Secretary read the Report of the Corresponding Societies Committee. It 
was agreed that a grant of 257. should be applied for at the meeting of the Com- 
mittee of Recommendations. On the proposal of Dr. J. G. Garson, it was agreed 
that the Conference should nominate a second representative to attend the Com- 
mittee. On Mr. Mark Webb’s proposal, it was decided that the Secretary 
should be the second representative. (These motions have since been proved 
to be out of order, the Rules of the Association only allowing the Conference to 
nominate one member on the Committee of Recommendations. ) 
The Chairman thep delivered his Address, entitled :— 
The Life and Work of Sir Joseph Hooker, O.M., F'.RS.1 
He said that the death of Sir Joseph Hooker, in December 1911, might be 
held to have been one of the most outstanding events of the year. He did not 
give any consecutive biographical sketch of this great botanist, but indicated 
the various lines of activity in which he excelled. He contemplated him as a 
traveller and geographer, as a geologist, as a morphologist, as an administrator, 
as a scientific systematist, and, above all, as a philosophical biologist. 
As a traveller Sir Joseph visited all the great circumpolar areas of the 
Southern Hemisphere. He spent almost four years-in India. He botanised in 
Palestine and in Morocco, and finally in the Western States of America.- The 
results he worked up into such great publications as ‘The Antarctic Flora’ amd 
“The Flora of British India.’ ; 
As an administrator Hooker guided for thirty years the destinies of Kew 
Gardens, and served for five years as President of the Royal Society. As a 
systematist he co-operated in the Genera Plantarum and the Kew Index. But 
it was as a philosophical biologist that he rose to the greatest heights. An 
early friend of Darwin, he was the first to accept his views. In 1859 Darwin 
himself wrote : ‘As yet I know only one believer, but I look at him as of the 
greatest authority—viz., Hooker.’ While Lyell wavered, and Huxley had not 
yet come in, Hooker was in 1859 a complete adherent to the doctrine of the 
mutability of species. 
This position was confirmed by a masterly series of essays from Hooker’s 
pen. The most notable was the introduction to the ‘ Flora of Tasmania.’ The 
last was that great address to the Geographical Section of the British Association 
at York in 1881 on ‘The Geographical Distribution of Organic, Beings.’ It was 
such works as these which led to the cumulative result that he was universally 
held to have been the most distinguished botanist of his time. 
* Printed in full in the Makers of British Botany, Cambridge University 
Press, 1912. 
