Bakee, F.R.S. : Geography of British Plants. 149 



square miles which it so chances fall within the bounds of three 

 counties, Yorkshire, Durham, and Westmoreland. 



Another point that I should wish to commend especially to the study 

 of the botanists of the north of England, is the distribution of the 

 species of what Watson calls the Intermediate type of distribution. 

 These are about 40 in number, and are concentrated, so far as Britain 

 is concerned, amongst the hills of the north of England. But then 

 they are all, I believe, plants that reappear in Central Europe, and with 

 us they form an outlying colony, widely dissevered from their central 

 area. I believe it would be found, if their general distribution was 

 worked out, that they are species of a comparatively boreal tendency, 

 so far as climate is concerned, and that they have a special affinity for 

 limestone, and that the want of limestone has kept them from spreading 

 northwards into Scotland. 



But it is quite time that I should come to a conclusion. In one sense 

 it has been a great pleasure to me to come down to Yorkshire again, 

 after nearly twenty years of absence, and take the chair at the annual 

 meeting of a society that represents more than two thousand of the 

 inhabitants of my native county, banded together for the promotion of 

 Natural Science ; but it has also made me remember how many of those 

 with whom I worked and rambled a generation ago have passed away 

 from amongst us. Since I left Yorkshire how many of the botanists 

 that were then old or middle-aged have gone to join the great majority 

 — Henry Baines, John Nowell, Wiliam Mudd, James Ward, James 

 Backhouse, John Tatham, Silvanus Thompson, Gerard Smith, 

 Abraham Stansfield, William Bean, John Windsor ; and now we 

 have lost our leader, Hewett Watson, the father of British botanical 

 geography, who, although he left the county at a very early age, was 

 also a Yorkshireman. 



Like clouds that rake the mountain summit, 

 Like waves that own no curbing hand. 

 How fast has brother followed brother 

 From sunshine to the sunless land. 



Within this last quarter of a century Darwin has pulled up the 

 old tree of Natural History by the roots, and planted it in fresh soil. 

 A. new generation has arisen, and in this present paper I have 

 done my best so to direct their steps that they may walk as worthy 

 successors of those whose places in our ranks now know them no 

 more. 



