K.— BOTANY. 193 



methods they pursued and realised to be so essential, are exactly those 

 which are required to-day for dealing with the problems of Systematic 

 Botany and its many associated studies. 



Henslow, Dyer and Wager were, undoubtedly, outstanding types of 

 men who possessed the gifts which we look for in our students, the love of 

 experiment, keen powers of observation and reasoning, accompanied by a 

 wide outlook, including the ability to see the full scope of a problem and its 

 possibilities in both the pure and applied lines of research. 



This brief consideration of the work and contributions of these three 

 pioneers in our science brings me to the subject which I have selected for 

 my address — Some of the Present-day Problems in Systematic and 

 Economic Botany. Not that I feel very competent to address a learned 

 botanical audience, since so much of my time is occupied with matters of 

 administration of a large establishment and with correspondence on every 

 sort of botanical subject with the Dominions and the Colonies, and with 

 our botanical colleagues throughout the world ; yet I have had the 

 temerity to do so, because one's range over the subject is so wide that I 

 am brought in touch, perhaps more than most professional botanists, 

 with so many interesting and unexpected developments and side issues, 

 which entail investigation and research in the domains of Systematic 

 and Economic Botany, Physiology, Genetics, Ecology and Plant 

 Pathology. 



In the realm of Systematic Botany I suppose our most important 

 problem is still that of the ' species.' Though botanists hold several 

 views on this fundamental question they nevertheless continue in their 

 work of species-describing, and the recently issued seventh supplement 

 of the Index Kewensis, with its some 33,000 new specific names and new 

 combinations, shows there is no diminution in this field of their very 

 necessary activities. I, with many of my colleagues at Kew and else- 

 where, must plead guilty to adding to the labours of our pundits in 

 nomenclature. 



It is, I think, hardly necessary to point out that Systematic or 

 Taxonomic Botany is, like other branches of our science, in a healthy 

 state of growth and development. In dealing with the study of the 

 vegetation of the earth it is essential in the first place to be able to catalogue 

 and describe our material, which may often be far from perfect. Herbarium 

 specimens, as they have been received since early times, have been duly 

 named and arranged, and very often the Taxonomist has had only a single 

 specimen on which to base his studies. 



In this way our Herbaria have become respositories of ' type speci- 

 mens ' of the utmost historical value, and from the study of these specimens 

 all our earlier and well-known floras have been written ; to give a few 

 instances, from Kew only, I may refer to the ' Flora Capensis ' and the 

 ' Flora of Tropical Africa,' more especially the earlier volumes, the ' Flora 

 of British India ' and the ' Flora Australiensis.' 



With the increase of our knowledge of the vegetation of the world, 



due to the larger numbers of people interested in botanical work and to 



more extended and more careful exploration, plants hitherto unknown 



are constantly being brought to light. As before, these are deposited in 



1930 n 



