456 BOTANICAL WORK OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



RETROSPECT. 



I confess I found it a great temptation to review, however imperfectly, 

 the history and fortunes of our subject while it belonged to Section D. 

 But to have done so would have been practically to have written the 

 history of botany in this country since the first third of the century. 

 Yet I can not pass over some few striking events. 



I think that the earliest of these must undoubtedly be regarded as 

 the most epoch making. I mean the formal publication by the Linneean 

 Society, in 1833, of the first description of "the nucleus of the cell," by 

 Robert Brown. (Misc. Bot. Works, I, 512.) It seems difficult to realize 

 that this may be within the recollection of some who are now living 

 amongst us. It is, however, of peculiar interest to me that the first 

 person who actually distinguished this all-important body, and indi- 

 cated it in a figure, was Francis Bauer, thirty years earlier, in 1802. 

 This remarkable man, whose skill in applying the resources of art to 

 the illustration of plant anatomy has never, I suppose, been surpassed, 

 was " resident draftsman for fifty years to the Boyal Botanic Garden at 

 Kew." And it was at Kew, and in a tropical orchid, Phakis grandifo- 

 Uus, no doubt grown there, that the discovery was made. 



It was, I confess, with no little admiration that, on refreshing my 

 memory by a reference to Bobert Brown's paper, I read again the vivid 

 account which he gives in a footnote of the phenomena, so painfully 

 familiar to many of us who have been teachers, exhibited in the 

 staminal hair of Tradescaniia. Sir Joseph Hooker (Proc. Linn. Soc, 

 1887-88, 65) has well remarked that "the supreme importance of this 

 observation, - - - leading to undreamt-of conceptions of the 

 fundamental phenomena of organic life, is acknowledged by all 

 investigators." 



It is singular that so profound an observer as Bobert Brown should 

 have himself missed the significance of what he saw. The world had 

 to wait for the discovery of protoplasm by Von Mohl till 1846, and till 

 1850 for its identification with the sarcode of zoologists by Oohn, who 

 is still, I am happy to say, living and at work, and to whom last year 

 the Linnsean Society did itself the honor of presenting its medal. 



The Edinburgh meeting of the association, in 1834, was the occasion 

 of the announcement of another memorable discovery of Bobert Brown's. 

 I will content myself with quoting Hofmeister's (Higher Cryptogamia, 

 432) account of it: "Bobert Brown was the discoverer of the polyem- 

 bryony of the Coniferw. In a later treatise he pointed out the origin of 

 the pro-embryo in large cells of the endosperm, to which he gave the 

 name of corpuscula." The period of the forties, just half a century ago, 

 looks in the retrospect as one of almost dazzling discovery. To say 

 nothing of the formal appearance of protoplasm on the scene, the foun- 

 dations were being laid in all directions of our modern botanical mor- 

 phology. Yet its contemporaries viewed it with a very philosophical 



