MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION IN BIRMINGHAM. 279 
A shoot of a flowering plant is thus an aggregate of the 
3rd order, and the plants compounded of shoots in various 
degrees of complexity are aggregates of the 4tli and higher 
orders. 
If this theory is correct it must give an explanation of 
the remarkable coincidence of monocotyledonous seeds 
with endogenous growth, and of dicotyledonous seeds with 
exogenous growth. This it does with great facility ; in the 
first case, where the strengthening of the frond is obtained by 
the infolding of the edges, it is shown that the second frond, 
which is necessarily enclosed within the first, must lag 
behind ; in the second case, where the strengthening is 
achieved by the thickening of the mid-rib, the second frond 
can and may advantageously become equal to the first, and 
thus produce a dicotyledonous embryo. 
MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION IN 
BIRMINGHAM. 
BY A SECRETARY OF SECTION C. 
The fifty-sixth Annual Meeting of the British Association 
commenced in Birmingham on Wednesday, September 1st. 
The Association was no stranger to the town, having met 
there previously in 1839, 1845, and 18G5 ; in fact, Birmingham 
is the first town which has received a fourth visit from the 
the congress of scientists. The Meeting of 1865, under the 
presidency of Mr. John Phillips, was a remarkable one, 
but every effort had been put forth to surpass it on the 
present occasion, and the improved circumstances of the 
“ Metropolis of the Midlands ” enabled this to be done with 
complete success. 
The proceedings commenced with the delivery of the 
annual address by the new President—Sir William Dawson, 
a distinguished Canadian geologist—in the Town Hall, on 
Wednesday evening. After glancing briefly at the advances 
in Science made during the twenty-one years which had 
elapsed since the Association met m Birmingham, he took 
for his main topic the history of the Atlantic, “ That mighty 
ocean which unites, not separates, the people of two 
continents.” 
