SECTION K.— BOTANY. 



SOME ASPECTS OF THE PRESENT-DAY 

 INVESTIGATION OF PROTOPHYTA. 



ADDRESS BY 



PROF. F. E. FPJTSCH, D.Sc, Ph.D., 



PRESIDENT OP THE SECTION. 



Since the last meeting of the British Association two well-known figures 

 have disappeared from the ranks of British botanists. Reginald William 

 Phillips, after nearly forty years' service in the furtherance of Welsh 

 University education during which he found little time for original in- 

 vestigation, used the years after his retirement to prosecute vigorously the 

 work on marine Algae that had attracted him at the outset of his scientific 

 career. That these promising researches were cut short, so soon after 

 they were begun, is a source of very great regret to his many friends. 

 Moreover, of workers on British marine Algae there are but all too few, 

 and a reduction in their number represents a serious loss to science. 



The sudden death of Abercrombie Anstruther Lawson, as a com- 

 paratively young man, is a heavy blow to British botany. His exceedingly 

 careful work on the gametophytes and embryos of Gymnosperms will 

 always remain as a model of what such researches should be. Lawson 

 had enjoyed the rather exceptional experience of filling academic posts 

 in three distinct quarters of the world, namely, in the Leland-Stanford 

 University, California, in the University of Glasgow, and in the University 

 of Sydney. At the last he occupied the Chair of Botany from 1912 till 

 the time of his death, and we know enough of his many activities there 

 to extend our sympathy to our colleagues in Australia at the loss they 

 have sustained by his premature demise. 



We have also to deplore the death of two well-known botanical artists 

 — John Nugent Fitch, who worked so long for the Botanical Magazine, 

 and Miss Matilda Smith, for may years artist at the Royal Botanic 

 Gardens, Kew. 



* * * * 



In practically confining my address to the Algae, and more particularly 

 to the freshwater groups, I need make no apology, for not only have I been 

 a student of these forms for some twenty-five years, but it appears that 

 the simpler Algae have never before been made the subject of an address 

 to this section. My predecessor in 1925, Prof. Lloyd Williams, it is true 

 dealt with the many points of interest presented by the Phaeophyceae, 

 but my remarks will refer in the main to forms with a much simpler con- 

 struction than these. Whatever view we may ultimately take as to the 

 relation of the present-day freshwater Algae to the rest of the Vegetable 



