718 TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION K. 



in conducting investigations on plants of economic importance. It would be 

 well if every botanist made himself really familiar with some limited portion 

 of applied botany, so as to be able to give useful assistance and advice at 

 need. The stimulus to investigation would amply repay the time required. 

 Even in continuing to devote ourselves to pure botany we cannot afford to 

 waste time and energy in purposeless work. It is written in ' Alice in Wonder- 

 land ' that ' no wise fish goes anywhere without a porpoise,' and this might 

 hang as a text in every research laboratory. 



A plant is a very mysterious and wonderful thing, and our business as 

 botanists is to try to understand and explain it as a whole and to avoid being 

 bound by any conventional views of the moment. We have to think of the 

 plant as at once a physico-chemical mechanism and as a living being ; to avoid 

 either treating it as something essentially different from non-living matter or 

 forcibly explaining it by the physics and chemistry of to-day. It is an advan- 

 tage of the study of causal morphology that it requires us to keep the line 

 between these two crudities, a line that may some day lead us to a causal 

 explanation of the developing plant and the beginnings of a single science of 

 botany. 



In replying to a unanimous vote of thanks, the President said : — We meet 

 under the immediate shadow of a great loss to British botany. Professor D. T. 

 Gwynne-Vaughan, who was for many years Secretary and then Eecorder of 

 this Section, died on Saturday, September 4, and his funeral takes place this 

 morning. There is no need for me, in speaking to botanists, to dwell on the 

 value of Professor Gwynne-Vaughan's work. I could wish that Dr. Scott and 

 Professor Bower, in whose laboratories his earlier work was done, and Dr. 

 Kidston, with whom he has since so brilliantly collaborated, were here to speak. 

 Alike in dealing with the anatomy of existing plants and with the fossil ferns, 

 his work is characterised by rare originality combined with the greatest 

 thoroughness. His papers on the anatomy of solenostelic ferns have exerted a 

 deep influence on the methods and the modern development of plant-anatomy, 

 while the series of memoirs on the fossil Osvuindacerc are a great contribution 

 to palaeobotany. Gwynne-Vaughan leaves a solid monument of achievement, 

 but the loss of the work which a man with such genius for investigation might 

 yet have done is an irreparable one. While in his published work Professor 

 Gwynne-Vaughan confined himself to plant-anatomy, in which he was a master, 

 he was a botanist of wide interests, in the field as well as in the laboratory, and 

 a stimulating teacher. I cannot trust myself to speak of him as a colleague and 

 as a friend. 



In order to mark our sense of the great loss to botanical science caused by 

 Professor Gwynne-Vaiighan's premature death, and of our deep sympathy with 

 Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan, I move on behalf of the Committee that we adjourn the 

 business of the Section for the time of the funeral service. 



Professor F. E. Weiss seconded the motion for adjournment, which was 

 carried unanimously, the members upstanding. The Section then adjourned 

 until noon. 



The following Papers were afterwards read : — 



]. On the Expression hy Measurement of Specific Characters, with 

 special reference to Mosses. By Professor Julius M.^cIjeod, 

 University of Ghent. 



Is it possible to describe and to identify an animal or a vegetable species by means 

 of figures representing the value of the specific characters ? I have tried to realise 

 this by measuring 38 characters in about 90 species and 20 varieties of the genus 

 Garahus. For each character I have determined the minimal, median, and maximal 

 value in each species and variety. The figures, set in order in tables, enabled me 

 to describe and to identify the species and. varieties more accurately than by the 

 usual methods of description. The war prevented me from finishing and publishing 

 my work. 



I tried to carry out similar work withjplants, in the Cryptogamic Laboratory 



