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auxiliary appliances of chemical reagents to which of late 
years so much attention has been paid. These remarks 
suggest but a few of the problems which are awaiting 
a thorough solution. With the remembrance of the import- 
ance of these problems fresh in our minds we may ask our- 
selves what are we individually doing as our contribution 
towards the attainment of the desired results. 
With a few noble exceptions I fear the answer to this 
question is alike unsatisfactory to us as men of Manchester 
and as Englishmen. We do not pursue wide and prolonged 
researches and work them out to their ultimate issues, in 
the way that is done by the naturalists of France and Ger- 
many. This remark is especially applicable to the subject 
of Vegetable Physiology. When I take up a number of the 
Annales des Sciences Naturelles and see such magnificent 
physiological memoirs as have been supplied by men like 
Mohl and Trecul, Van Tieghem and Nageli, Hofmeister and 
Tulasne, I cannot but ask myself what have we English- 
men to show as our contributions to this series. I do not 
forget that our countryman Robert Brown was the grandest 
figure in the group of pioneers in these researches ; but upon 
whom has his mantle fallen ? We fear that no one has 
risen up amongst us capable of receiving it. The defective 
standard of which I complain is further shewn in the 
Physiological text-books with which we Englishmen are 
satisfied. Excellent and useful as the Manuals of Henfrey, 
Balfour, and Oliver may be, they bear no comparison to the 
noble “ Lerbuch” of Sachs ; a volume which is as rich 
in the facts which it records as it is profound in the 
philosophy which it seeks to expound. I know not 
what the cause of this unsatisfactory state of the higher 
departments of study in England may be. Something is 
doubtless due to the fact that we are all more or less engaged 
in a feverish race after the material comforts of life, which 
do not, in the same degree, tempt our Continental brethren 
