president’s address, 
125 
in his note-books, which in the most liberal manner lie placed at 
the service of both Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Southwell, who repeatedly 
acknowledge their indebtedness to him in the ‘ Birds of Norfolk.’ 
In later life he gave his attention to the cultivation of Boses, in 
which he was very successful ; ho was also interested in the botany 
of his neighbourhood, and often sent wild flowers to me for 
identification. Mr. Dowell had been a member of our Society since 
the year 1878. 
When I laid before you in 1894, “ Notes on some Plants collected 
in Spitsbergen by Colonel Feilden," I ventured on a few general 
remarks on the distribution of flowering plants in the Arctic regions, 
and expressed a hope that L might some day return to the subject 
from a wider base, and in greater detail, and I take this opportunity 
of doing so — the great interest to those who study the flora of our 
own country of the Arctic element (what II. ( ’. Watson calls partly 
the Highland and partly the Scotch element in it) being my excuse. 
The largest factor in producing the present distribution of the 
Arctic flora, and the greatest agent in determining its present 
limits, we must believe to have been the Glacial Epoch. But in 
considering the matter from a botanical point of view, we happily 
are not concerned with the vexed question of the causes of that 
epoch, and need not pause to attempt to arrive at any decision 
whether the hypothesis which is known as the astronomical or that 
called the physical is the more likely, or to try to understand the 
complicated theory lately revised and published in an English' 
dress, that past changes of climate have been due to variations in 
the heat given off by the sun, a variable star, once white, now yellow, 
later on to become red, and finally dark, and we may be content to 
accept Professor Neumayr’s criticism of- this last supposition, which 
indeed covers the whole of them, t “ for this or any other assump- 
tion there is no proof forthcoming.” 
Neither need we try to weigh the evidence for or against the 
occurrence of Interglacial Periods, for the sum of the influence 
* Eug. Dubois, ‘ The Climates of the Geological Ikist ’ (1805). 
f M. Neumayr, “Climates of Past Ages,” ‘Nature,’ vol. xlii. (1890) 
pp. 148 and 175. 
