PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 705 
the prospects of the method. Speaking for myself, I think that it has already 
thrown much light on embryological problems, and is likely to throw more. 
At the end of this very short and imperfect sketch of the progress of botanical 
embryology in recent years, it is natural to look back and attempt to estimate the 
importance of the whole subject and its relation to other branches of botanical 
science. J have treated it from the morphological side only, but clearly every 
department of botany must deal with the immature plant as well as with the 
adult form. For example, the struggle for existence between two species in any 
particular locality must be profoundly affected by the characters of their seed- 
lings. If one species should gain a decided advantage over the other early in 
life, the vanquished species may never live to form seed, and may thus disappear 
from that neighbourhood in the first generation. This is an extreme case to show 
the importance of considering seedling structure in problems of ecology and 
distribution. 
The internal structure of seedlings is certainly a department of vegetable 
anatomy, just as their adaptation to the conditions of life is a department of 
vegetable physiology. That the connection between embryology and systematic 
botany must be equally close seems at first sight to be beyond dispute, but the 
exact nature of that connection is as yet undetermined. In systematic botany 
we have the net result of an enormous mass of experience. Generations of 
botanists have examined and described the external characters of plants; they 
have arranged and rearranged them in groups until at last the instinct for 
affinity has been satisfied. In this continual sifting of characters some have been 
separated out as generally of systematic importance—the floral characters, for 
example, and those of the seed. Certain features of the embryo are included 
among those characters, as already mentioned, but, on the whole, systematists 
have dealt exclusively with the adult plant. The embryo itself has been treated 
rather as a portion of the seed than as an individual. 
It would be rash to assume that seedling characters have been disregarded 
by systematists because they were too busy with the fully-developed plant to 
pay proper attention to the young forms. In all probability some of the earlier 
botanists examined the external characters of seedlings and rejected them 
when they proved of little systematic value. But embryology, like the other 
branches of botany, entered on a new phase when the compound microscope 
came into general use. It was commonly denied that the anatomical characters 
of mature plants had systematic value until the test case of fossil botany was 
decided in favour of anatomy. We need not be surprised that conclusions 
drawn from the new embryology—that is, the embryology which includes internal 
characters as well as external—sometimes appear to conflict with the results of 
systematic botany, and it does not necessarily follow that embryological evidence 
is of no systematic value. The fault may lie with the embryologists, who, being 
Tuman, do occasionally misinterpret their facts, or possibly the natural system 
may need some modification in the light of new knowledge. When both explana- 
tions have failed to account for the discrepancy in a number of cases we may 
be forced to give up looking for phylogenetic results from embryology. 
And so in the end the appeal is again to Time, who—as Milton says—devours 
“No more than what is false and vain, 
And merely mortal dross. 
So little is-our loss, 
So little is thy gain.’ 
. The following Papers were then read :— 
1. On the Nature of Life. By Professor J. Retnxe, Ph.D. 
The more, after the united endeavours of zoologists and botanists, the essen- 
tial concordance of animal and vegetable life has come to light, the more the 
fundamental problem of science has come to the fore: What is the nature of life 
and how is it to be explained? 
Often people have tried to solve this problem more in accordance with pre- 
1913. Zoe, 
