192 



A rmiversary Meeting. 



[Nov. 30, 



The distribution and exchange of duplicates from our library, 

 commenced last session, has been continued, and several defective 

 series among the periodicals on our shelves have been made good. 

 The general work of the library has received careful attention at the 

 hands of Mr. Alfred White, who shortly before the last Anniversary 

 was appointed to the office of Assistant Librarian. 



The Copley Medal for the year has been awarded to the eminent 

 botanist, your former President, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. It is 

 impossible, within the limits to which I must confine myself on the 

 present occasion, to do more than briefly refer to some of the more 

 salient features of his scientific career, extending as it does over 

 nearly half a century of unceasing intellectual activity ; and I need 

 hardly say that in attempting to give some idea of important labours 

 which lie outside my own studies, I am dependent on the kindness of 

 scientific friends. 



As a traveller, he can perhaps only compare with Humboldt in the 

 extent to which he has used travel as an instrument of research. To 

 quote a remark by Professor Asa Gray, " No botanist of the present 

 century, perhaps of any time, has seen more of the earth's vegetation 

 under natural conditions." His Antarctic voyage in 1839-43 supplied 

 the material for a series of well-known works of first-rate import- 

 ance on the vegetation of the southern hemisphere ; and these in 

 their turn formed the basis of important general discussions. The 

 journey to India in 1847-51 yielded, in the Himalayan journals, as 

 Humboldt has remarked, "a perfect treasure of important observa- 

 tions." The maps made of the passes into Thibet are even still 

 unsuperseded. The fine work on the " Sikkim Rhododendrons " was 

 at once a revelation to the botanist and to the horticulturist. His 

 account of the glacial phenomena of the Himalayas supplied facts 

 both to Darwin and to Lyell. A journey to Morocco in 1871 and a 

 later visit to North America led to important conclusions on plant 

 distribution. 



Perhaps Sir Joseph Hooker's most important place in scientific 

 history will be found in the rational basis upon which he placed 

 geographical botany. De Candolle, while admitting the continuity 

 of existing floras with those preceding them in time, still adhered in 

 principle to the multiple origin of species. To quote a remark by 

 Professor Asa Gray — " De Candolle's great work closed one epoch in 

 the history of the subject, and Hooker's name is the first that appears 

 in the ensuing one." According to Lyell, " the abandonment of the 

 old received doctrine of the 'immutability of species ' was accelerated 

 in England by the appearance in 1859 of Dr. Hooker's ' Essay on the 

 Flora of Australia.'" This Essay effected a revolution. It was 

 quickly followed in 1860 by the classical essay on the " Distribution 

 of Arctic Plants," and in 1866 by the Nottingham Lecture on Insular 



