T 39 
E. N. Thomas . 
THE AUSTRALIAN MEETING OP THE 
BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 
II. Botanical Papers. 
By E. N. Thomas. 
T HE meeting of the British Association in 1914 will be doubly 
memorable in that it was held at the Antipodes and at the 
outbreak of the Great War. The main business of the meeting 
was sharply divided between Melbourne and Sydney, but special 
lectures were also given at other big centres such as Adelaide, 
Brisbane, etc. 
The botanical papers included many of special local interest 
such as those given at Melbourne on the Flora and Ecology of the 
Environs, and even including one on the romantic “ Never-never 
Land” of the North-West Territory. At Sydney a group of papers 
was presented dealing with many aspects of the all prevailing gum- 
tree, the genus Eucalyptus , which Mr. Maiden has made so 
peculiarly his own. 
Presidential Address. 
The President began his address with a brief survey of the 
growth of Australian Botany from the foundations laid by Banks on 
Captain Cook’s expedition in 1770 to the establishment of the latest 
Chair of Botany at Sydney. Curiously enough Banks’ invaluable 
Journal did not see the light for 125 years after it was written, 
although of course, his collections of some 1,000 species had long 
been lodged at the British Museum. In 1810 appeared Robert 
Brown’s “ Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae,” which incorpor¬ 
ated his own and Banks’ plants, and in 1859 was published the 
“ Antarctic Flora,” the result of Sir Joseph Hooker’s travels. This 
included not only the description of some 3,000 species but a 
masterly discussion of the problems of distribution and descent. 
The current systematic work is the “ Flora Australiensis ” of 
Bentham and Muller, completed in 1878. This recognises two main 
strains, the one a specialised indigenous flora, the other an Indo- 
Australian flora best seen in Queensland and the North, and 
indicative of ancient land connections between Australia and 
adjacent islands. The mountain flora common to Australia and 
New Zealand and other southern extra-tropical mountains as also 
certain American and Mediterranean plants are less easily accounted 
for. Professor Bower pointed out that the real work of botanists in 
