Australian Meeting of the British Association. 141 
can only be furnished by laborious investigation along new and old 
lines. 
The phenomena of convergence or parallel development force 
us to consider the working of heredity which makes this possible. 
It may be well to entertain as a working hypothesis the possibility 
of the determination or, at any rate, the promotion of heritable 
mutations by external conditions, which is of course the old heresy 
of inheritance of acquired characters. We are, perhaps, too prone 
to force the analogy between plants and animals, and in plants, at 
any rate, the possibilities of environmental influence on evolutionary 
development cannot be excluded from consideration. 
The President concluded by emphasising the extreme import¬ 
ance of the direct historical evidence of Palaeophytology—“the most 
positive line that we possess in the broad avenue of botanical 
Phylesis ”—which may even enable us to forecast future possibili¬ 
ties with a measure of success. 
Morphology and Anatomy. 
For Sydney was reserved the honour of the Presidential 
Address, but the jealously guarded prestige of Melbourne was 
upheld by the presentment at its meeting of an important paper by 
Professor Bower dealing with the Matonioid Ferns. The author 
has examined in detail Cheiropleuria bicuspis, a Malayan Fern 
figured by Sir W. Hooker, and now shown to possess features 
connecting with Matonia, Dipteris and Platyccrium. In the light of 
Professor Bower’s extensive knowledge of the comparative morph¬ 
ology of Ferns, he is able to pronounce on Cheiropleuria as a 
synthetic type showing perhaps closest relationship to Platycerium 
but serving to link up these forms in such a way as to suggest 
their common origin from a Gleichenioid source with Matonia as 
in most respects the most primitive genus. 
A paper on the Morphology and Anatomy of certain pseudo- 
Monocotyledons by Dr. E. N. Thomas and Miss A. J. Davey, gave 
a preliminary account of certain pseudo-Monocotyledonous forms. 
These are characterised by a much elongated “ petiolar” region to 
the cotyledon which is very marked in Conopodium denudatum, etc., 
and by the early appearance (in Cyclamen persicum before the 
cotyledon emerges from the seed) of a tuberous swelling which is 
variously related to the “ collet ” and which therefore seems to 
arise in very different morphological regions. Older seedlings, 
however, prove that the tuber is always formed below th*e 
