ON THE PRESENT STATE OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF 

 THE GEOGRAPHY OF BRITISH PLANTS. 



By J. Gilbert Baker, F.R.S., &c. 



The Annual Addkess of the President to the Members of the Yorkshire 

 Naturalists' Union, at Selby, on March 3rd, 1?83. 



When Professor Williamson and Mr. Denison Roebuck first spoke to 

 me at the York Meeting of the British Association about undertaking 

 to fill for a year the presidental chair of your Union, I felt at first 

 very unwilling to accept the responsibility. Greatly interested as I 

 have always been in what concerns the Natural History of my native 

 county, when I lived in Yorkshire my time was so much taken up 

 by business engagements, that in order to collect the material for my 

 book on " North Yorkshire," T was forced to almost entirely neglect 

 the two other Ridings, and I left the county for London too soon 

 after it was finished to be able to find time for visiting those inter- 

 esting tracts in the West and East Ridings that I should have been 

 so glad to have had an opportunitj?- of exploring ; and I also felt that, 

 since I have lived at Kew, my attention has been so much occupied 

 with other kinds of botany, that in anything relating to home-work, I 

 had not only not progressed with the times, but that I had forgotten 

 a great deal of what I knew familiarly twenty years ago. As 

 however, I failed to convince your representatives that these excuses 

 were good ones, I accepted their invitation, and beg now to thank you 

 heartily for the compliment which it implies. When the time came round 

 that I had to select a subject for this present address, I thought I 

 could best utilize the occasion by asking you to consider for a while 

 what is the present state of our knowledge of the geography of British 

 plants, with a view that, in thinking the matter over, our attention 

 might be specially drawn to considering what are the grooves in which 

 further research may be profitably pushed forward. At the outset 

 you will, I think, all be prepared to admit readily the proposition that 

 in Natural History, in an eminent degree, the general rule holds good 

 that the value of our work, whether as individuals or societies, will 

 depend very greatly upon its being carried out upon a methodical 

 plan. The facts of Natural History are so infinitely numerous, that if 

 a naturalist does not go about his work methodically, he may toil hard 

 and long, and yet have very little of any value to show, as the result 

 N.S., Vol. viil. Apr., 1883. 



