Cambridge Meeting of the British Association. 183 
recent problems. Professor Eriksson followed with a contribution 
to the subject from the point of view of the “mycoplasm theory.” 
This was followed by other papers on Fungi, which we have no 
space to notice. 
On Tuesday morning Dr. F. F. Blackman gave an account, 
illustrated by apparatus, of the recent researches, by himself and 
Miss Matthaei, on “Sunshine and C0 2 -Assimilation.” The Section 
was delighted, as much by the extremely thorough and fundamental 
nature of the work, as by the extraordinary ingenuity and patience 
with which each technical difficulty was faced and surmounted as 
it arose. The President, Professor Reinke and Dr. Gardiner vied 
with each other in their tributes to the value of the authors’ work. 
Professor Vines followed with a lucid account of the most 
recent advances in our knowledge of the Proteases of Plants; Dr. 
Blakeslee gave an account of his striking and beautiful work on the 
remarkable sexual behaviour of conjugating hyphre in the Mucorini; 
and Professor Errera and Dr. Lotsy read papers on alkaloids. 
Mrs. Scott shewed her attractive Kammatograms in the small 
lecture room during the morning. 
In the afternoon, Dr. Scott dealt with the recent discoveries of 
seeds among carboniferous plants under the title of “A new Aspect 
of the Carboniferous Flora.” 
On Wednesday morning Professor Fujii of Tokio com¬ 
municated his recent discoveries on the Pollination of Gymnosperms. 
Professor Chodat read an important paper on “Oxidising Enzymes 
and Katalases in Plants,” Dr. Miyake presented his results “ On 
the Centrosome of the Hepaticas,” and some other papers were read, 
including a number on Fungi which had been crowded out of 
an earlier programme and were taken in the small lecture-room 
simultaneously with the main meeting. 
This very incomplete and fragmentary account of the meetings 
of the Section will at least serve to convey an impression of the 
enormous number of papers read, as well as of their great interest. 
Many more were crowded out altogether. The great draw-back of 
the meeting was in fact the attempt to squeeze into a strictly 
limited time quite twice as many papers as could be adequately 
dealt with. The result is inevitable injustice, weariness and con¬ 
fusion, as well as the almost total elimination of useful discussion. 
The difficulty only arises in its acute form in the case of a large 
meeting like this one. The last bad case of congestion was at 
Glasgow in 1901. However, the problem of organisation ought not 
to be quite beyond the powers of the officers of the Section. It is 
successfully solved in America, and no doubt it can be in England. 
Probably the experience gained at Cambridge will be turned to good 
account at the York meeting in 1906. 
There was an extremely successful dinner of the Section in the 
beautiful combination-room of St. John’s College on Monday night, 
at which fifty-nine botanists were present. 
Cambridge hospitality was true to its reputation. Most of the 
foreign guests were entertained at Sidney Sussex College, the 
Secretaries of Sections at Emmanuel. The arrangements were 
everywhere excellent. 
