K.—BOTANY. 241 
will best be remembered by that magnificent work ‘The Trees of Great 
Britain and Ireland,’ which, in conjunction with Professor Augustine 
Henry, he produced at his own expense on a splendid scale. 
I propose to deal this morning with some aspects of the development 
of pure botany during the last thirty or forty years, especially in this 
country, and with the bearing of these developments on the present 
position of the subject. In seeking for a suitable starting-point from 
which to begin the observations I have to make I naturally turned to 
the address delivered by my predecessor in this chair at the last meeting 
of the Association in this city. On that occasion, in 1896, the chair 
of Section K was occupied by Dr. D. H. Scott, and I found at once 
that the remarks with which he began his Presidential Address were 
surprisingly apt for my purpose. For definiteness of outlook on the 
problems of pure botany and for lucidity of expression they could not 
be surpassed, and their author will, I am sure, forgive me if I use his 
statement as the primary text from which to develop my critical 
exposition. 
‘The object of modern morphological botany,’ said Dr. Scott, ‘ is 
the accurate comparison of plants, both living and extinct, with the 
object of tracing their real relationships with one another, and thus 
of ultimately constructing a genealogical tree of the vegetable kingdom. 
The problem is thus a purely historical one, and is perfectly distinct 
from any of the questions with which physiology has to do. 
‘ Yet there is a close relation between these two branches of biology, 
at any rate to those who maintain the Darwinian position. For from 
that point of view we see that all the characters which the morphologist 
has to compare are, or have been, adaptive. Hence it is impossible for 
the morphologist to ignore the functions of those organs of which he is 
studying the homologies. To those who accept the origin of species by 
variation and natural selection there are no such things as morpho- 
logical characters pure and simple. There are not two distinct cate- 
gories of characters—a morphological and a physiological category—for 
all characters alike are physiological.’ And then the President pro- 
ceeded to quote, evidently with full agreement, from Professor (now 
Sir) Ray Lankester. ‘ According to that theory’ [i.e. the Darwinian 
theory], wrote Professor Lankester in ‘ The Advancement of Science,’ 
“every organ, every part, colour, and peculiarity of an organism must 
either be of benefit to an organism itself, or have been so to its ancestors. 
. Necessarily, according to the theory of natural selection, struc- 
tures either are present because they are selected as useful, or because 
they are still inherited from ancestors to whom they were useful, though 
no longer useful to the existing representatives of those ancestors.’ And 
a little further on Dr. Scott said: ‘ Although there is no essential differ- 
ence between adaptive and morphological characters, there is a great 
difference in the morphologist’s and the physiologist’s way of looking 
at them. The physiologist is interested in the question how organs 
work ; the morphologist asks, What is their history ? ’? 
The way of looking at the science of biology so clearly expressed 
' British Association Report, Liverpool Meeting, 1896, pp. 992, 993. 
$s 2 
