BOTANICAL WOKK OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 457 



calm. Thwaites, who regarded Carpenter as his master, described at 

 the Oxford meeting in 1847 the conjugation of the Diatomacece, and " dis- 

 tinctly indicated," as Carpenter (Memorial Sketch, 140) says, "that 

 conjugation is the primitive phase of sexual reproduction.'' Berkeley 

 informed me that the announcement fell perfectly flat. A year or two 

 later Suniinski came to London with his splendid discovery (1848) of 

 the archegonia of the fern, the antheridia having been first seen by 

 Eageli in 1814. Carpenter (loc. cit., 141) gave me, many years after, a 

 curious account of its reception. "At the council of the Ray Society, 

 at which," he said, "I advocated the reproduction of Suminskfs book 

 on the 'Ferns,' I was assured that the close resemblance of the anthe- 

 rozoids to spermatozoa was quite sufficient proof that they could have 

 nothing to do with vegetable reproduction. I do not think, 7 ' he added — 

 and the complaint is pathetic — " that the men of the present generation, 

 who have been brought up in the light, quite apprehend (in this as in 

 other matters) the utter darkness in which we were then groping, or 

 fully recognize the deserts of those who helped them to what they now 

 enjoy." This was in 1875, and I suppose is not likely to be less true now. 



The Oxford meeting in 1860 was the scene of the memorable debate 

 on the origin of species, at which it is interesting to remember that 

 Henslow presided. On that occasion, Section D reached its meridian. 

 The battle was Homeric. However little to the taste of its author, the 

 launching of his great theory was, at any rate, dignified with a not 

 inconsiderable explosion. It may be that it is not given to the men of 

 our day to ruffle the dull level of public placidity with disturbing and 

 far-reaching ideas. But if it were, I doubt whether we have, or need 

 now, the fierce energy which inspired then either the attack or the 

 defense. When we met again in Oxford last year, the champion of 

 the old conflict stood in the place of honor, acclaimed of all men, a 

 beautiful and venerable figure. We did not know then that that was 

 to be his farewell. 



The battle was not in vain. Six years afterwards, at Nottingham, 

 Sir Joseph Hooker delivered his classical lecture on Insular Floras. It 

 implicitly accepted the new doctrine, and applied it with admirable 

 effect to a field which had long waited for an illuminating principle. 

 The lecture itself has since remained one of the corner stones of that 

 rational theory of the geographical distribution of plants which may, 

 I think, be claimed fairly as of purely English origin. 



HENSLOW. 



Addressing you as I do at Ipswich, there is one name written in the 

 annals of our old section which I can not pass over — that of Henslow. 

 He was the secretary of the Biological Section at its first meeting in 

 1832, and its president at Bristol in 1830. I suppose there are few men 

 of this century who have indirectly more influenced the current of 

 human thought. For in great measure I think it will not be contested 



