SECTION K.— BOTANY. 



PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS 

 IN TAXONOMIC AND ECONOMIC 



BOTANY. 



ADDRESS BY 



ARTHUR W. HILL, C.M.G., Sc.D., D.Sc, F.R.S., 



PRESIDENT OP THE SECTION. 



The honour of having been invited by the Council of the British Association 

 to preside over the deliberations of Section K this year in this historic 

 city was of no small personal pleasure to me, more especially since the 

 first meeting of the Association I ever attended was the Bristol meeting 

 of the year 1898, the second time the Association met in this city. At that 

 meeting you will remember our distinguished botanical guide, philosopher 

 and friend. Emeritus Professor F. 0. Bower, our President at this third 

 meeting at Bristol, was then president of Section K. 



It is interesting to recall the fact that when the British Association 

 first met at Bristol, in the year 1836, John Stephens Henslow, that 

 fine botanical naturalist, presided over Section D. ' There are few men 

 of this century,' as the late Sir William Thiselton-Dyer, the first president 

 of this section, pointed out in his address at Ipswich in 1895, ' who have 

 indirectly more influenced the current of human thought. For in great 

 measure I think it will not be contested that we owe Darwin to him.' 



In recalling Henslow's name in his historic connection with our meeting 

 here this year, it is fitting to remember in passing what he did for the 

 teaching of Natural Science in Cambridge, for up to the time he was 

 appointed professor of botany, in the year 1825, Natural History was 

 utterly disregarded at the university, and his predecessor in the Chair of 

 Botany had not delivered any lectures for some thirty years ! 



Henslow's teaching methods are worthy of study even to-day, when 

 we are rather prone to lose interest in the broader lines of our subject and 

 to shut ourselves apart, owing to the many specialist problems with which 

 we are confronted. Henslow realised the value of practical methods, and 

 that Botany, from the stimulus it gave to ' the strengthening of the 

 observant faculties and expanding the reasoning powers,' was a subject 

 not only of intense interest but also a means to a liberal education. 



As the present head of our great national institution for the study of 

 Botany both pure and applied, Taxonomic and Economic, I look, some- 

 what with sorrow, it must be admitted, for young men who have been 

 adequately trained to use their observant faculties with regard to the 

 living plants, and to \'isualise the many problems which are opem'ng up, 

 and are already open, awaiting the men of vision and wide outlook ready 



