3ftft£ IPears of Botan? in Bristol. 
By Jas. W. White, FX.S. 
HE period covered by the life of the Bristol Naturalists' 
JL Society has been a period of enormous scientific progress, 
involving many changes in the educational and industrial systems 
of the country, and corresponding alterations in the mode of life 
of its inhabitants. It may not, perhaps, be easy to determine if 
the advances of science, in a general sense, during the past fifty 
years have exceeded in importance those achieved in the earlier 
half of the nineteenth century ; but there can be no question that 
the study of the so-called natural sciences, and of biology in 
particular, has been pursued with an energy and success unrivalled 
in any previous epoch. 
The doctrine of evolution as we have it to-day is essentially a 
modern product — a necessary outcome of latter-day developments 
in physical science — and in its establishment ideas and evidence 
gleaned from the behaviour of vegetable organisms have had no 
small share. Its probable working in the history of organic pro- 
cesses has been more clearly revealed to us by the hypotheses of 
Darwin and Wallace, and it may here be remarked that not the 
least forcible of its indications points to a valid and welcome 
explanation of the occurrence of plant-variations and races, and a 
possible solution of the species problem. 
Apart from I^ondon and the older Universities scientific teaching 
in schools, either public or private, was practically non-existent 
in 1862. The medical curriculum of that date did include botany, 
and therefore courses of lectures on the subject were delivered in 
provincial medical schools by local lecturers, themselves often 
practitioners in the town. This was the case in Bristol. Other 
botanical aspirants, whose way in life lay outside medicine, had to 
make shift for themselves with books and kindred spirits. People 
groping in the dark are always glad of company — they cling to- 
gether whenever practicable — and it may well be that a feeling of 
that kind has materially helped to bring about the formation of 
Naturalists' Societies. Present-day students know little indeed of 
the conditions under which a training in science could be obtained 
by their forerunners in earlier generations. Higher Grade Schools 
and University Colleges, where lecturers and laboratories are pro- 
vided for instruction in pure science at low fees, are recent 
creations. They have come into being during the period here 
reviewed. 
In the realm of botany, within the last few decades, we have had 
a great revolt. The systematist, who for centuries had ruled and 
directed all the botanical teaching that was attempted, has been 
deposed. The study of plants in the field, their recognition, 
classification and relationship to each other by comparison of 
