364 The British Association at Winnipeg. 
The local Secretary this year was Professor Buller, who kindly 
placed the convenient rooms of the botanical department of the 
University of Manitoba at the disposal of the section. The thanks 
of the members are due to him, and also to Professor Cowles, who, 
as Secretary of the Botanical Section of the American Association, 
took a great deal of trouble before the meeting, in arranging for the 
reading of papers by members from the United States. 
In view of the close touch which Kew maintains with the 
Colonies, the selection of Colonel Prain as President of Section K 
for the Winnipeg Meeting, was singularly appropriate. A number 
of years have elapsed since the Section had a President whose 
interests are mainly centred in systematic botany. It was therefore 
fitting that Colonel Prain should select this branch of the science 
as the subject of his Presidential Address, which he delivered on 
Thursday morning, August 26th. 
The Address dealt primarily with the aims and methods of 
work of the systematic botanist, and then went on to draw 
attention — not altogether unneeded in these days of extreme 
specialization — to the many points of contact between systematic 
botany on the one hand, and morphology, palaeobotany, ecology, &c. 
on the other. 
“ The two-sided task of the systematist,” said the President, 
“ is to provide a census of the known forms of plant-life, and to 
explain the relationships of these forms to each other. The work 
on one side is mainly descriptive, on the other mainly taxonomic ; 
but the two are interdependent, and their operations so intimately 
blended, that it is difficult to treat them apart.” While “ the 
descriptive student can hardly see the wood for its trees, the 
taxonomic student works in more open country, and can look upon 
the wood as a whole.” 
Colonel Prain defended the conservatism of method which is 
apparent especially in the descriptive worker, who still relies mainly 
on organography. On the other hand, the taxonomist finds imagi¬ 
nation and originality as useful as the worker in any other branch of 
botany. The aims of the descriptive worker are primarily utili¬ 
tarian ; his results are means to the ends that others have in view. 
Those of the taxonomist, however, based as they are on phylo¬ 
genetic study, stand in a sense, on a somewhat higher plane. 
The President dealt at some length with the effect of the 
personal equation in descriptive work, which results in its extreme 
forms, in either “ hair-splitting ” or “ lumping.” He concluded that 
