176 The Meeting of the British Association. 
Dr. Rendle followed with a general criticism of Miss Sargant’s 
theory, with which he disagreed on a number of different grounds. 
Mr. Tansley called attention to two objections, first a point con¬ 
nected with the “ double bundles ” of the petioles of the cotyledons 
in the Dicotyledons with which comparison is made, and secondly 
the unlikelihood of the monocotyledons, plants of the most varied 
habit and the most primitive of which are not geophilous, being 
derived from a specialised ecological type like the geophyte. Miss 
Sargant having replied the discussion closed. 
Professor Marshall Ward criticised Professor Eriksson's 
“ Mycoplasm ” theory with most destructive effect. Professor 
Atkinson of Cornell University, created some sensation by stating that 
he had come straight from Eriksson’s laboratory and throwing out 
dark hints of the latest revelation of discovery there. 
In the afternoon Professor Farmer read a most abstruse and 
learned paper entitled “ On Stimulus and Mechanism as Factors of 
Organisation.” This took the place of the usual “ semi-popular 
lecture,” a substitution which led to much amusement. 
Mr. J. Lloyd Williams followed with an account of his most 
important work on Alternation of Generations in Dictyotace^e, an 
abstract of which appears in the present issue of this journal. 
In the evening a most successful botanical dinner was held at 
the Prince of Wales’ Hotel. 
On Tuesday morning Dr. F. F. Blackman gave a short account 
of the historical development of schemes of classification of the 
Algae, leading up to the most recent views of Lagerheim, Luther and 
Bohlin. Professor Marshall Ward gave an interesting little account 
of the new Botanical Laboratory at Cambridge, illustrated with 
plans and elevations, and called attention to the distinguishing 
feature of the new Institute, the attempt to meet the specific wants 
of the different workers in the Cambridge school of botany. 
The President then gave an excellent summary of the leading 
points of Professor Oliver’s and Dr. Scott’s recent important 
work in assigning the fossil seed Lagenostoma to the Cycadofilix 
Lyginodendron , with which readers of this journal are already 
familiar. 
Mr. Yapp read a paper on Fruit dispersal in Adenostemma 
viscosum , Mr. Arber on Homoeomorphy among Fossil Plants, Mr. 
T. W. Woodhead on Methods of Mapping Plant Distribution, in 
which he shewed excellent results in the mapping of the effect of 
