PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 35 
sent representatives. The opening of the Botanical 
Exhibition, in the orangery of the historic palace of 
Schonbrunn just outside the city, occupied the first day. 
This exhibition was an exceedingly interesting one, and 
showed the present position of botany from a teaching as 
well as from a general view. A series of diagrams and 
coloured photographic lantern slides of microscopic 
preparations, flowers and plant associations and other 
objects; living cultures of Algae—all kinds of apparatus 
and photographs of tropical vegetation in Brazil, Malaya, 
etc., were shown. A remarkable feature was the unique 
specimen of Fockea capensis, a member of the family 
Asclepiadaceae, which, originally brought from the Cape, 
still remains the only known specimen. The plant has a 
hard woody rhizome as big as a child’s head from which 
in rainy seasons numerous shoots are developed. It was 
described and drawn by Jacquin in his “* Fragmenta ”’ 
at the beginning of the last century. Jacquin wrote 
repeatedly to Sir Joseph Banks’ secretary Dryander, 
and the London Society are pleased to possess these 
communications together with the many _ exquisitely 
delicate drawings. Jacquin’s herbarium, consisting largely 
of plants cultivated in Vienna and the Schonbrunn gardens, 
was bought by Banks and is now in the general collection 
of the British (Natural History) Museum. During the 
sitting of the Congress a bust of Nicholas Joseph Jacquin, 
who was Professor of Chemistry and Botany at Vienna 
from 1769-1796 was unveiled in his honour in the 
Fest-Saale of the University. Quoting from Professor 
Wiesner’s appreciation at the ceremony :— 
“His broad horizon and great powers of organisation were 
shown in the fact that, in the second half of the 18th century, 
no scientific, and especially no natural scientific undertaking was 
started in which Jacquin did not take an important part. He 
embodied the ideal of the academic teacher.” 
