TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K. 919 
« Annals of the Caleuttia Botanic Garden.’ In consideration of the supposed great 
importance of the book to the forester, and in the belief that the copies would be 
eagerly taken by the Forest Department, an extra hundred copies were printed, 
and these hundred copies were put into stout canvas binding suitable for camp use. 
These copies, or as many of them as he cared to take, were offered to the 
Head of the Forest Department in India at the reduced price of fifteen rupees 
per copy. The result was an official refusal to buy a single one, although the 
purchase of the whole hundred (which was not asked for) would have cost only 
fifteen hundred rupees—a sum which would have reduced the revenue of the year 
by about one twelve-thousandth part! An appeal against this ruling having been 
made to a still higher authority, a modified order was subsequently issued per- 
mitting such Forest officers as desired to possess the book to buy copies and charge 
the cost in their office expenditure. I may state that the book was not a private 
venture. It was produced at the expense of the Government of Bengal. 
It is not because I like to play the censor that I have made these remarks 
about the Forest Department. Having myself served in it from 1869 to 1871, 
I can speak from my own experience’as to the value, from the utilitarian point 
of view, of a knowledge of the names, affinities, and properties of the trees, 
shrubs, and herbs which compose an Indian jungle, and of a knowledge of 
these as individual members of the vegetable kingdom rather than as masses of 
tissue to be studied through a microscope. The appointment which I held in India 
for twenty-six years after leaving the Forest Department gave me full opportunity 
of getting into touch with all who interest themselves in a lnowledge of plants, 
and of discovering how few of these at the present day are Forest officers. The 
majority of the latter, if they love their trees, are content to do so without 
knowing their names or relationships! There are, of course, splendid exceptions 
who know as well as love. The general decadence of the teaching of Systematic 
Botany in England during the past twenty years is, perhaps, to some extent the cause 
of the low estimation in which the science is held by the authorities of the Indian 
Forest Department. Twenty-five years ago Systematic and Morphological Botany, 
no doubt, had too great prominence given to them in the teaching at universities 
and colleges of this country, and the other branches of Botanical science were too 
much neglected, although I do not think they were despised. Now it appears to 
me that Systematic Botany is too much neglected. I hope it is not also despised. ! 
Few of the systematists who survive in England are now to be found attached to 
the universities. They are mostly clustered round the two great Herbaria in 
London ; and such of them as-have to look to Systematic Botany for the means of 
livelihood are not in the receipt of salaries such as one might reasonably expect in 
one of the richest countries in the world! 
The following Papers and Reports were read :— 
1. Some Methods for Use in the Culture of Alge. 
By Professor Marsnatt Warp, /.2.S. 
The following notes are of the nature of suggestions, since the experiments are 
not yet completed, and much has still to be done, no doubt, before the efficacy of the 
treatment and the faults and difficulties of the methods in detail are fully demon- 
strated ; but since the author has found they can be used with some measure of 
success, the various workers’ interested in the culture of algee may care to take 
the methods up and try to improve them. 
1. If agar is swollen in dilute acetic acid, and then washed very thoroughly 
so that every trace of soluble salt is removed, it can be used, mixed with the 
necessary culture fluids, as a convenient medium for the growth of some algze, as 
Beyjerinck had already observed. But,so far as the author knows, the use of such 
a medium for separating alge in plate culture and for observing their growth in 
hanging drops has not been attempted. It can be done, however, though the 
