ANNUAL MEETING. 
142 
protection which is necessary for the preservation of game does- 
also to some extent protect other birds, and has, therefore, at 
any rate, that advantage. 
It is very remarkable, considering how long we have lived on 
this globe with other animals and plants, how little we know 
about them, and yet there is intense interest in unravelling the 
secrets of nature. I do not allude to difficult problems which 
require physical laboratories and observatories, nor to those 
which can only be solved by technical study. The formation of 
the blood, for instance, is still a mystery ; and it is certainly an 
extraordinary thing, considering the great importance of blood in 
the animal system, that we do not yet know how or where it is 
produced. There are many other questions of the same kind 
which might be mentioned, but which, though of great import- 
ance, hardly come within the range of such a Society as our own. 
Even, however, as regards the habits and life of our com- 
monest animals and plants, there are still an immense number 
of interesting problems remaining to be explained and dissolved. 
Perhaps the commonest of all English plants is Pleurococais 
vulgaris, the little alga or seaweed which covers the stems of 
trees, palings, and other woodwork of a similar character with a 
coating of green. It consists of small rounded cells, sometimes 
quite separate, sometimes grouped together in little packets of 
two, four, or eight. These divide and sub-divide and multiply in 
this manner. But obviously this is only a part of the life 
history of the plant. Like the rest of its family it probably at 
certain times and under certain conditions produces spores, but 
all this part of its life history is quite unknown. In the case 
of the common mushroom, again, the spores are of course 
enormously abundant, and yet nothing is known about their 
germination. 
Peas, beans and other leguminous plants almost invari- 
ably have swellings or tubercles on their roots. These are 
supposed to be produced by bacteria, and when such tubercles 
are present great quantities of nitrogen are accumulated. An 
important result of this is that leguminous crops are supposed 
actually to enrich the soil. In Germany in many places the 
yellow lupine is especially grown for no other purpose but to be 
ploughed in and thus improve the soil for other crops. These 
bacteria are therefore of great importance and abundance, but 
the rest of their life history is quite unknown. The relation of 
these bacteria to the lupines and their whole action is still very 
little understood. 
As regards the animal kingdom, many of the most interesting 
recent discoveries have been made with reference to the com- 
monest species. Until within the last few years the male of the 
gallfly which produces the common King Charles oakapple was 
unknown. It is now found that the species goes through a sort 
of alternation of generations, the autumn brood being quite 
different to that of the spring. In bees and some allied insects 
