SOME ASPECTS OF THE PRESENT 
POSITION OF BOTANY. 
ADDRESS TO SECTION K (BOTANY) BY 
A. G. TANSLEY, M.A., F.R.5., 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
We meet to-day in a city which is one of the greatest seaports of the 
kingdom, traditionally the main channel of our commerce and inter- 
course with the great English-speaking republic across the Atlantic, and 
also the main centre of the import of cotton and of the export of cotton 
goods, with which the prosperity of Lancashire, and to no small degree 
of the country, is so intimately associated. To the enterprise and public 
spirit of the citizens of Liverpool we owe the creation and development, 
within an astonishingly short period, of the distinguished university the 
hospitality of whose staffs, organisations, and buildings we shall enjoy 
during the coming week. Many of us can vividly remember the pride 
and satisfaction with which we saw arise, especially during the last 
decade of last century, one after another of the great institutes of 
research and teaching which have contributed so much to the advance- 
ment of science in the comparatively few years during which they 
have existed. In such surroundings we cannot but be stimulated afresh 
to labour to the limit of our abilities in the cause of that great human 
activity—the advancement of science in all its branches—which as 
members of the British Association we all have at heart. 
Since the last meeting of the Association we botanists have to mourn 
the loss of two striking and dominant personalities. Sir Isaac Bayley 
Balfour played a great and worthy part in that revival of scientific botany 
in this country which marked the last quarter of last century. During 
his long tenure of the Chair of Botany at Edinburgh and of the Director- 
ship of the famous Botanic Garden in that city, he was widely known 
for the ability and assiduity with which he carried out the work of one 
of the most important and onerous botanical positions in the kingdom, 
and for the native shrewdness and sanity, the ripe judgment and experi- 
ence, which he was always ready to place at the disposal of his col- 
leagues. Mr. Henry Elwes was a country gentleman of a type for 
which England has long been famous, who, like Lord Herbert of Cher- 
bury, conceived it ‘a fine study and worthy a gentleman to be a good 
botanique that so he may know the nature of all herbs and plants, being 
our fellow creatures.’ To this study Mr. Elwes brought the utmost 
energy and vigour, pursuing to the remotest lands, both personally and 
by deputy, an untiring search for the objects of his attachment. He 
