66 AdJress. [Feb. 



hope which T expressed in my La,sfc annual address that we shoukl soon 

 learn something of the botanical riches of the new province of Upper 

 Burma is being realised more speedily than I had ventured to expect. 

 For General Collett, an excellent and most enthusiastic botanist, has 

 already sent to the Herbarium of our Botanic' Garden several most 

 interesting collections from the Shan hills. These collections contain 

 several species which appear to be new to science, and many which have 

 not been collected since Wallich's visit to Burma sixty years ago : 

 and I learn from Dr. King that he has arranged for botanical collec- 

 tions being made at Bhamo. Thanks to the energy of Mr. G. Mann, 

 Conservator of Forests, the botany of the Assam hill ranges is being 

 gradually worked up, and the region between Assam and Burma will 

 soon (there is some reason to believe) cease to be botanically a terra in- 

 cognita. Mr. Mann appears at present to be the only Forest t)fficer in 

 Northern India who in any way forwards Botanical science, a state of 

 matters little creditable to the Forest Department which of all others 

 has the best and rarest materials at its disposal. 



The chief work of public interest done in the Herbarium of the 

 Botanical Garden at Sibpur has been the preparation, by Dr. King, of a 

 monograph of the ' Oaks and Chestnuts of South-Eastern Asia,' similar 

 to the same author's recently completed work on the ' Figs ' of the 

 Indo-Chinese countries. Dr. Prain, the recently appointed Curator of the 

 Herbarium, has, I am informed, occupied part of his time in preparing a 

 monograph of the difficult herbaceous genus Pedicularis. This mono- 

 graph will probably see the light during the current year. 



In the department of physiological Botany, our member Dr. D. D. 

 Cunningham, has been hard at work, and has completed a remarkable 

 memoir on the phenomena of movement in the leaves of the well-known 

 * Sensitive plant.' The cause of the movement has long been discussed 

 by biologists. For many years it was considered to be explained by a 

 mechanical theory, but Gardener and some recent writers have en- 

 deavoured to explain it by a theory of nervous or vital energy. This 

 theory has for its basis the new anatomical doctrine that the protoplas- 

 mic contents of neighbouring cells in this plant are connected by thin 

 threads, and that thus a kind of moniliform protoplastic tissue is formed. 

 These writers seek to explain the phenomena of movement by the 

 transmission along this continuous protoplasm of a low kind of nervous 

 force. The results of five hundred experiments and observations made 

 by Dr. Cunningham on living sensitive plants go to prove that, even 

 were the protoplasmic continuity an indubitable fact, the movements 

 cannot be explained by any nervous force proceeding from the axis 

 of the plant to the extremities of its leaves. Although not on a 



