TEANS ACTIONS 
OF THE 
HERTFORDSHIRE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
i. 
ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 
By the President, F. Maule Campbell, F.L.S., F.Z.S., etc. 
Delivered at the Annual Meeting , 21 st February , 1888, at Watford. 
Ladies and Gentlemen,— 
"While I was thinking whether I should take the phrase, “the 
survival of the fittest,” as the subject of my address, I received 
my copy of the ‘Flora of Hertfordshire,’ just published by our 
Society, and, having turned over the leaves of our volume, I could 
not refrain from ejaculating: “This hook is fit to live!” How 
much should we prize a similar hook on the flora of a few centu¬ 
ries past, and what advantages will not distant posterity possess 
over us in the wealth of the literature of bygone days ? What will 
the flora he at that period? Will wind-fertilised flowers be re¬ 
placed by delicate adaptations to insect-fertilisers? Our garden 
flora has increased in beanty within the memory of the living, and 
some plants may yet colonise themselves in our woods and pastures. 
Will the coming wild flora so abound in brilliancy and grandeur, 
that the flora of the present time will be regarded only as a con¬ 
necting link with the first entomophilous flowers which in all 
probability were green, snch as now seen in the bryony (.Bryonia 
dioica ) and hellebore {Helleborus viridis) ? Will the constant re¬ 
currence of the hues of green which we now find in blooms of 
general brilliancy become exceptional ? We speak of the vegeta¬ 
tion of the Carboniferous era as dull, consisting as it did of huge 
cryptogams—tree-ferns, equiseta, and lycopods—unillumined by 
a petal. Simple growths doomed to be wholly or partly displaced 
VOL. V.—PART I. 
1 
