SECTION K : CARDIFF, 1920. 



ADDRESS 



TO THE 



BOTANICAL SECTION 



Miss E. R. SAUNDERS, F.L.S., 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



Year by year we see the meetings of the Association recur, pursuing ;i 

 course whicli neither geographer nor astronomer would venture to 

 predict and leaving traced out behind them a figure unknown to the 

 mathematician. Nevertheless the path of its journeyings is ever retuini- 

 ing upon itself. As this recurrence is brought afresh to one's mind, 

 there is a natural impulse to reflect upon the piogress which has 

 been made in the intervening period in the science which one here finds 

 oneself called upon to represent. Not quite thirty years have elapsed 

 since the last occasion on which the Association was welcomed to 

 Cardiff. Curiosity to learn whether the matter of the discourse 

 delivered by my predecessor on that occasion had a connection, close 

 or remote, with the particular subject with \\hich I proposed to deal 

 in this Address led me to refer to the Annual Report of the Association 

 for 1891. I thus became aware how recent was the occurrence of the 

 mutation — or should I rather say of the dichotomy '? — which led to the 

 appearance of a Botanical Section, for twenty-nine years ago Section K 

 had not yet come into existence. At that period the problems relating 

 to living organisms, whether concerned with plant or animal, whether 

 of a morphological or physiological nature, were all embraced within 

 the wide field of Section D, the Section of Biology. Though in succeeding 

 years discovery at an ever-increasing rate and in many new fields 

 of investigation has made inevitable the separation first of Physiology, 

 and then of Botany from their common parent, we may with advantage 

 follow the precedent set by the Association as a whole, and, as a Section, 

 return from time to time upon our course of evolution. I shall there- 

 fore invite your attention to a subject which lies within the wide province 

 of Biology and makes its appeal alike to the botanist, zoologist and 

 physiologist — the subject of Heredity. 



By the term Inheritance we are accustomed to signify the obvious 

 fact of the resemblance displayed by all living organisms between 

 offspring and parents, as the direct outcome of the contributions received 

 fmm the two sides of the pedigree at fertilisation : to indicate, in fact, 



