Ixxx 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



well-known port cannot be of much interest except to the collectors 

 themselves. Take, for instance, the great United States Exploring 

 Expedition under Captain Wilkes. Rich collections were made in 

 the two comparatively little-known groups of the Sandwich and the 

 Fiji Islands, both of them remarkable for the peculiarities of their 

 vegetation, and complete Floras of these groups, such as the distin- 

 guished botanist entrusted with the Botany of the Expedition would 

 have drawn up, had his advice been followed, would have been import- 

 ant contributions to science. In lieu of this, we have the com- 

 mencement of a work far too splendid in typography and illustration 

 to be within reach of many botanists, never likely to be finished, 

 and in which a large space of the text is occupied by an enumeration 

 of some of the commonest plants picked up at Rio Janeiro, Port 

 Jackson, the Cape of Good Hope, and other well-known ports. 

 Professor Gray's short memoir above mentioned, on the Botany of 

 Japan, one of the results of a subsequent expedition under Captain 

 Ringgold, has contributed far more to the advancement of science 

 than the pretentious volume insisted on by Captain Wilkes. Again, 

 the Botany of Prince Waldemar's Journey in the Himalaya, by the 

 late Dr. Klotzsch and Dr. Garcke, which has just appeared, is an 

 instance of a costly work of little use beyond showing oif the her- 

 borizations made under princely auspices. The number of species 

 collected is very small compared with the rich stores from the same 

 country long since distributed among the principal herbaria of 

 Europe, and full half of what are given as new are identical with or 

 slight varieties of well-known plants. On the other hand, we may 

 well be proud of the results of our own Antarctic Expedition in the 

 three splendid and complete Floras of Dr. Hooker, treated in the 

 manner most conducive to the progress of science, without any 

 attempt to give prominence to the author's own labours. It is to 

 be hoped that such Faunas and Floras of places specially visited, 

 such as the Nicobar Islands, will form a prominent feature in the 

 forthcoming Zoologies and Botany of the Austrian Novara Expedition. 



The details into which I have been led, with reference to my own 

 special subject of Systematic and Descriptive Botany, leave me no 

 time to advert to recent works on Physiology, which, taken in 

 its largest sense, is that important part of the study of nature for 

 which systems and descriptions are but the means. There is, how- 

 ever, one branch, that which I have above termed Biology, upon 

 which I should wish to say a few words, in order to call the atten- 

 tion of our Fellows resident in the country to a field of inquiry com- 

 paratively untrodden, and upon which any series of carefully con- 



