September 11, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



363 



from which the practical applications 

 spring. Sydney, as the capital of a great 

 state, has already laid her com-se, as re- 

 gards botanical science, in accordance with 

 it. Her botanic garden and the recently 

 developed botanical department in the 

 university (which, I understand, may find 

 its home ultimately in the botanic garden) 

 will serve as centers of study of the pure 

 science of botany. This will readily find 

 its application to agriculture, to forestry, 

 to economies, and in various other lines 

 present and future. I am convinced that it 

 is in the best interest of any state that can 

 possibly afford to do so to encourage and 

 liberally endow the central establishment 

 where the pure science of botany is pur- 

 sued, and to continue that encouragement 

 and endowment, even though results of im- 

 mediate practical use do not appear to be 

 flowing from it at any given moment. For 

 in these matters it is impossible to forecast 

 what will and what will not be eventually 

 of practical use. And in any ease as edu- 

 cational centers the purely botanical estab- 

 lishments will always retain their impor- 

 tant function of supplying that exact in- 

 struction, without which none can pursue 

 with full effect a calling in the applied 

 branches. 



We may now turn from generalities to 

 certain special points of interest in your 

 peculiar flora which happen to have en- 

 gaged my personal attention. They center 

 round a few rare and isolated plants be- 

 longing to the Pteridophyta, a division of 

 the vegetable kingdom which there is every 

 reason to believe to have appeared early in 

 the history of evolution. But though the 

 type may be an ancient one it does not fol- 

 low that every representative of it preserves 

 the pristine features intact. Throughout 

 the ages members of these early families 

 may themselves have progressed. And so 

 among them to-day we may expect to find 



some which preserve the ancient characters 

 more fully than others. The former have 

 stood still, and may be found to compare 

 with curious exactitude with fossils even 

 of very early date. The latter have ad- 

 vanced, and though still belonging to the 

 ancient family, are by their modifications 

 become essentially modern representatives 

 of it. For instance, the fern Angiopteris 

 has a sorus which very exactly matches sori 

 from the Paleozoic period, and it may ac- 

 cordingly be held to be a very ancient type 

 of fern. On the other hand, the genera As- 

 plenium, or Polypodium, include ferns of a 

 type which has not been recognized from 

 early fossil-bearing rocks, and they may be 

 held to be essentially modern. But still all 

 of them clearly belong to the family of the 

 ferns. 



In the Australian flora only three of the 

 four divisions of the Pteridophyta are rep- 

 resented. For, curiously enough, there 

 does not appear to be any species on your 

 continent of the widely spread genus 

 Equisetum, the only living genus of that 

 great phylum of the Bquisetales, which fig- 

 ured so largely in the Paleozoic period ; and 

 this notwithstanding that one species (E. 

 dehile) is present among the Polynesian Is- 

 lands. But all the three other divisions of 

 the Pteridophyta are included, and are rep- 

 resented in each ease by plants which show 

 peculiar and, probably for the most part, 

 archaic characters. I propose to sketch be- 

 fore you very briefly the points of interest 

 which the more notable of these archaic 

 types present. Some justiflcation may be 

 found for my doing so because nearly all of 

 them have been submitted to detailed study 

 in my laboratory in Glasgow, and much of 

 the work has been done upon material sup- 

 plied to me by your own botanists. I take 

 this opportunity of offering to them collec- 

 tively my hearty thanks. 



The tenure by Dr. Treub of the office of 



