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THE 608th ordinary MEETING, 



HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, 

 WESTMINSTER, ON MONDAY, MARCH 17th, 1919, 



AT 4.30 P.M. 



Alfeed T. Schofield, Esq., M.D., in the Chair. 



The Chairman called upon the Secretary to read the Minutes of 

 last Meeting. 



The Secretary read the Minutes of the previous Meeting, which were 

 confirmed and signed. 



The Chairman : Before 1 call upon Dr. Rendle to read the Paper he is 

 so kind as to bring before us this afternoon, I must call your attention to 

 the circumstances under which he reads it. We were to have had the 

 lecturer whcsj name is on the card, who was unfortunately taken ill at 

 the last moment, and Colonel Mackinlay succeeded in getting Dr. Rendle 

 to take his place, and this Society is greatly indebted to him. 



I now call upon Dr. Rendle to read his Paper. 



PLANTS OF THE BIBLE. By Alfred B. Rendle, Esq., 

 D.Sc, F.R.S., F.L.S., Department of Botany, British 

 Museum, S.W. 



MR. CHAIRMAN, ladies and gentlemen, I am afraid my 

 action is not quite so magnanimous as has been described 

 to you. The real facts of the matter are these : As Dr. 

 Wernham was unfortunately taken ill, I felt it was my duty 

 to supply his place, and do the best I could, and so I told 

 Col. Mackinlay that if a talk on the Natural History of the Bible, 

 more especially the Plants, would be welcome to the members 

 of the Institute, I should be pleased to say something about it 

 this afternoon. It is a subject with which I have had something 

 to do in connection with the Tercentenary of the Bible, 

 We prepared an exhibition at the Natural History Museum, 

 and I had the arrangement of the botanical part of that exhibition, 

 so if I refer to a book in the course of the lecture I am merely 

 referring to some of my own notes. The exhibition as a whole 

 has been removed, but the botanical section still remains in the 

 Central Hall of the Museum. 

 As regards the natural history of the Bible, there is one other 



