THE CONCEPTION OF SPECIES AS AFFECTED BY 
RECENT INVESTIGATIONS ON FUNGI 
W. G. FARLOW. 
Tune fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the American 
Association is a fitting occasion for a retrospective view of the 
different branches of science represented in our Society, and one 
would be glad to hear, from the lips of some botanist who was 
present at the first meeting of the Association, an account of the 
changes which have been brought about in the methods of botan- 
ical study and research, and of the progress which has been 
made in North America during the past half-century. Fifty 
years, however, is a long time in the life of any individual, and 
of those who in 1848 were young, or comparatively young, even 
the most favored could hardly be expected to retain their scien- ~ 
tific activity in 1898. On glancing over the list of members in 
1848, one sees the familiar names of a number of botanists, 
including Ashmead, J. W. Bailey, Barratt, Jacob Bigelow, 
Buckley, Dewey, Emerson, Engelmann, L. R. Gibbes, Gray, 
B. D. Greene, Edward Hitchcock, Oakes, Olney, Pickering, 
Thurber, Torrey, and Tuckerman. Not one of these leaders of 
American botany in their day remains to tell us of the Asso- 
Ciation in its infancy and to trace its development with the 
vividness which personal experience alone can supply. 
It would be scarcely fitting in me to attempt to give a general 
Sketch of the part which botany and botanists have played in 
the life of the Association; nor, remembering the review of 
recent investigations in botany presented by Prof. Marshall 
Ward at the meeting in Toronto last year, is it desirable that 
I should encroach on the ground so thoroughly and so interest- 
ingly covered by him. I may, however, on this occasion, be 
permitted to say a few words on a single question on which 
Opinions have changed very much during the last fifty years, 
ddress of the Vice-President and Chairman of Section G, Botany, at the 
fiftieth anniversary meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science, Boston, August, 1898. 
