here, forestry is now included as an optional subject in the university curriculum for an agricultural degree); a chair, or part of one, in the Royal College of Science at Newcastle, founded conjointly by the Board of Agriculture and the County Council; a course of instruction in science for practical foresters in the Royal Botanic Garden at Edinburgh, maintained by the Board of Agriculture; and a lecture course on forestry in the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical Institute, similarly provided for. I must not omit to mention, too, the beginning, just made, by the Surveyors' Institute of the formation of a forestry museum in London, which should have an important educative influence. Little though it is, I think there is occasion for congratulation that even so much has been done to provide instruction, and I would have you note that in this education the different classes concerned with forestry are all recognised. Valuable as the teaching so being given is, it must have an effect in showing the need there is for more. In one way the teaching of all these bodies is incomplete, and must be imperfect, inasmuch as they have not the means for practical forestry work. Until this is provided, as I have indicated already, the teaching of forestry cannot be thoroughly carried out.

But, after all, what has been done in the way of supplying our wants in the way of teaching is nothing to what is required if forestry is to be adequately taught in Britain. Dr. Nisbet, who, in his book already mentioned, has had the last say on this question, boldly states the requirements at six forestry chairs in universities, and four schools of practical sylviculture in the vicinity of forests. I do not think he put the needs one whit too high. I should be even disposed to add to them, because I note he has omitted to take into account the claim of Wales, whence there has recently been a request for the establishment of forestry teaching.

But there are two questions strictly pertinent to this demand, which need answering if the proposals are to be brought within the sphere of practicabilityfirstly, whence are the funds to be obtained for this organisation; and, secondly, where are we to get the teachers?

Dr. Nisbet puts his hand in the Treasury pocket for the money-some five thousand pounds per annum-required by his scheme. I do not think many of us will be so sanguine as to expect the whole financial aid could le directly obtained in this way. But it may be, I think, of significance in regard to this to consider the sources from which money has been forthcoming for what has already been done. The Government, through the Board of Agriculture, has given most, the remainder has come from the County Councils and from private contributions.

There is no reason to suppose the Board of Agriculture will be less willing in the future than it has been to aid in the establishing of forestry teaching in suitable centres; but its support from the limited funds-eight thousand pounds-at its disposal for educational purposes is always given as a grant in aid, and is contingent upon evidence of local effort towards the end desired, which we must therefore look to in the first instance.

It is of no use to speculate upon the prospects of private munificence providing equipment in any centre. We may hope for it, but I do not think times are such as to lead us to expect large pecuniary aid from landowners. After vigorous effort amongst them, extending over some years, to secure an endowment for a chair of forestry in Edinburgh, a sum of a little over two thousand pounds is all that has been raised.

But forestry is one of those subjects to the teaching of which we may be more sanguine of support from County Councils. It will always be a matter of regret to scientific men, and those interested in the industrial progress of the country, that the grand opportunity furnished by the fund dealt with under the Local Taxation Act (1890) was not taken more advantage of by the Government of the day. Distributed, even in part, through representative educational institutions, it could have provided equipment for technical education of the highest kind beyond our dreams. Thrown at the heads of the County Councils, before these bodies had had time to settle to their prescribed work, there has been, in the opinion of those well qualified to judge, no little waste. You could not create all at once the machinery requisite for the most efficacious expenditure of half a million of money on tech

nical teaching. Much of the work done by these bodies is admirable. It is indeed surprising in the whole circumstances how efficiently technical instruction has been carried out, and no doubt it will improve. But it had a most extravagant start. It is difficult to trace, in the general returns of the technical education undertaken by the County Councils, the details of their work, and I have not been able to discover how far forestry has been treated as a subject of instruction. It has not, I think, been often included. But the example of Northumberland and Durham in respect of the Newcastle chair is one that gives encouragement for thinking that, if the due importance of forestry to the community were inade clear, County Councils, in districts favourable for forestry and its concomitant industries, might come forward with some of the financial support needed for the provision of the educational equipment.

It appears to me that whilst we must obtain from the Government the institution of sylvicultural areas for practical instruction, our best chance of success in acquiring the necessary endowment for the rest of the teaching lies in the line of combination between the Board of Agriculture and the County Councils, with, it may be, aid from private benefactors. But if we were to draw financial support from County Councils, or from private sources, we must as a first step towards this make known, more thoroughly than it is, the nature of the national interests involved. We must disabuse landowners, land agents, and practical foresters of the notion that forestry consists in the random sticking in of trees, which anyone, no matter how unskilled, may accomplish. We must bring home to the people's minds that in science is to be found the only sure guide to proper timber-growing, and that scientifically managed forests are alike a profit to the producer, a benefit to the community of the region in which they are reared, and a source of national wealth. Once we have got so far as to create this opinion, the funds for as extended a scheme of forestry education as may be necessary will, I venture to think, be forthcoming.

There is still the other question to answer-Whence are the teachers to come? This is, I think, fundamental. For, given a competent teacher, he will soon find opportunity for teaching. If to-morrow the whole or even a half of the chairs suggested by Dr. Nisbet as essential were founded, how should we meet the demand for men to fill them? We might, of course, draw upon the Indian Forest Service, but I do not know where you would find teachers in Britain. But if there is no prospect of such immediate requirement of teachers, that does not make the fact of their deficiency of any less moment. There is surely something wrong when men capable of giving scientific instruction in so important a practical subject are so scarce.

This is how it touches us botanists, and upon our shoulders I am disposed to throw the blame for the present outlook. We do not seem to have realised, except in relation to medicine, that modern botany has an outlet. Perhaps it has been the influence of medicine that has engendered this. We find chemists and physicists devoting their science to the furtherance of practical aims. Zoologists have applied theirs to the elucidation of problems bearing on the fishery industry; and we see in that monument to the ability and energy of Professor Ray Lankester, the marine biological laboratory at Plymouth, an experimental station which, while it contributes to the nation's prosperity, serves at the same time as a home of pure research. But where is the practical outcome of modern botany? I must not overlook such brilliant work as that of Marshall Ward, full of purpose, and significant as it is to many large industries, nor that of Oliver in its bearings on horticulture. But it does seem to me that the general trend of botanical work in Britain is not utilitarian. Perhaps as good an illustration as could be given of the slight practical importance attached by the lay mind nowadays to botany is the fact that the Scottish Universities Commissioners have made it-though I must add it is bracketed with zoology--optional with mathematics for the degree in agriculture!

It is matter of history that its utilitarian side gave the first impetus to the scientific study of botany. The plant-world, as the source of products of economic value and drugs, attracted attention, and out of this grew, by natural development,

the systematic study of plants. The whole teaching of botany was at the first, and continued for long to be, systematic and economic, and it was from this point of view that, the herbalist having become the physician, botany became so essential a branch of medical study. It is noteworthy that as an early practical outcome of the study came the establishment of botanic gardens, which, at their institution, were essentially what we would now style experimental stations, and contributed materially to the introduction and distribution of medicinal and economic plants, and to the trial of their products. If they are now in many instances simply appendages of teaching establishments, or mere pleasure-grounds, we at least in Britain are fortunate in possessing an unrivalled institution in the Royal Gardens at Kew, which still maintains, and under its present able Director has enormously developed, the old tradition of botanic gardens as a centre in our vast empire, through which botany renders scientific service to our national progress.

In Britain, consequent perhaps on our colonial and over-sea possessions, the systematic side of botany continued predominant long after morphological and physiological work had absorbed the attention of the majority of workers and made progress on the Continent. Not that we were wanting in a share of such works, only it was overshadowed by the prevalent taxonomy, which in the hands of many no longer bore that relation to its useful applications which had in the first instance given it birth, and had become little more than a dry system of nomenclature.

The reaction of a quarter of a century ago, which we owe to the direct teaching of Sachs and De Bary and the influence of Darwin, many of us can remember; in it some who are here to-day had a share. Seldom, I think, is a revolution in method and ideas of teaching and study so rapidly brought about as it was in this instance. The morphological and physiological aspect of the subject infused a vitality into the botanical work which it much needed. The biological features of the plant-world replaced technical diagnosis and description as the aim of teachers and workers in this field of science. No weightier illustration of the timeliness of this change could be found than in the attitude of medicine. But a few years ago he would have been rash who would predict that botany would for long continue to be recognised as a part of university training essential to medical students. Its utility as ancillary to materia medica had lost point through the removal of pharmacy from the functions of the physician. But what do we see now? Not the exclusion of botany from the university curriculum of medical study, but the recognition to such an extent of the fundamental character of the problems of plant-life, that it is now introduced into the requirements of the colleges.

But if the old taxonomic teaching was stifled by its nomenclature, there is, it seems to me, a similar element of danger in our modern teaching, lest it be strangled by its terminology. The same causes are operative as of old. The same tendency to narrowing of the field of vision, which eventuates in mistaking the name for the thing, is apparent. With the ousting of taxonomy, and as the laboratory replaced the garden and museum, the compound microscope succeeded the hand-lens, and for the paraphernalia of the systematist came the stains, reagents, and apparatus of microscopical and experimental work as the equipment necessary for the study of plants, the inwards rather than the outwards of plants have come to form the bulk of the subject-matter of our teaching, and we are concerned now more with the stone and mortar than with the general architecture and plan of the fabric; we are inclined to elaborate the minute details of a part at the expense of its relation to the whole organism, and discuss the technique of a function more in the light of an illustration of certain chemical and physical changes than as a vital phenomenon of importance to the plant and its surroundings. This mechanical attitude is quite a natural growth. It is a consequence of specialisation, and it is reflected in our research. But it must be counteracted if botany is in the future to be aught else than an academic study, as it was of old an elegant accomplishment. It has come about very much because of that want of recognition by botanists, to which I have already referred, of the natural outlets of their study of their failure so far to see the lines through which the subject touches the national life. Modern botany has not yet found in this country its

full application. It has not yet rendered the State service as it ought, and as was done by the taxonomic teaching it supplanted.

It is from this point of view that I wish to point out to you to-day that through forestry-and although I have particularly dealt with this branch of Rural Economy, what I say is equally true of horticulture and agriculture-modern botanical study should find a sphere of application by which it may contribute to our national well-being, and which would have a directive influence upon its teaching, taking it out of the groove in which it tends to run. What we botanists need to do in this connection is to teach and to study our subject from a wider platform than that of the mere details of individual form, and to encourage our pupils to study plant-life not merely in water-cultures in the laboratory, but in the broader aspects exhibited in the competitive field of Nature.

If forestry is ever to thrive in Britain botanists must lay the foundation for it in this way. We cannot expect to make our pupils foresters, nor can they yet get the practical instruction they require in Britain. In this we must depend yet a while on Continental schools; the stream of Continental migration, which needs no longer to flow in morphological and physiological channels, must now turn in the direction of forest schools. But we can so mould their studies and give bias to their work as will put them on the track of this practical subject. If we had only a few men so trained as competent foresters, and capable of teaching forestry, there would be an efficient corps with which to carry on the crusade against ignorance and indifference, the overcoming of which will be the prelude to the organisation of forestry schools and scientific sylviculture in Britain. The influence of the individual counts for much in a case like this. The advent of a capable man started forestry teaching in Scotland, which years of talk had not succeeded in doing. And so it will be elsewhere.

I have endeavoured, thus briefly, to sketch the position, the needs, and the prospects of forestry in Britain. Its vast importance as a national question must sooner or later be recognised. It is a subject of growing interest. Its elements are complex, and it touches large social problems; but the whole question ultimately resolves itself into one of the application of science. To botanists we must look in the first instance for the propagation of the scientific knowledge upon which this large industry must rest. They must be the apostles of forestry. And forestry in turn will react upon their treatment of botany. Botany cannot thrive in a purely introspective atmosphere. It can only live by keeping in touch with the national life, and the path by which it may at the present time best do this is that offered by forestry.

The Section was then divided into two Departmerts: (1) Zoology, (2) Botany.

1. On the Didermic Blastocyst of the Mammalia.

By Professor A. W. W. HUBRECHT, LL.D.

It is a fact that about the simple and early didermic stage of the mammalian blastocyst very divergent views are at the present moment held by different observers. Only lately an English embryologist, who with great technical skill has considerably added to our knowledge of the development of the mouse, brought forward certain ingenious speculations concerning this didermic stage in other mammals besides those with which he was personally acquainted. The author referred to Dr. Robinson's paper in vol. xxxiii. of the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science.'

According to these views the outer layer of the monodermic blastocyst is in reality a hypoblastic layer. The didermic phase essentially originates out of this

by a gradual spreading of epiblast cells outside the more primitive hypoblastic wall.

However ingenious these speculations may be, the author holds them to be

erroneous.

As an example of a mammal the early development of which furnishes us with decisive evidence in this respect, the author wishes to call attention to Tupaja javanica, a small insectivorous mammal from the Malay Archipelago, of which a stuffed specimen was exhibited.

Of this mammal the author possesses a most complete series of preparations of the early developmental phases, including the extrusion of the polar bodies, the fecundating process, the segmentation, &c. Selections from these preparations were brought over by him to the meeting, which were demonstrated to those who were desirous to look at them more closely.

On the plate exhibited to the Section a few of the more important stages were figured by which the growth of the didermic blastocyst is elucidated.

It was seen that during the early stages of cleavage of the ovum there is no sensible difference in size of the cells then arising. Still, as early as the solid morula-stage, there is an unmistakable outer layer and an inner core of cells, the latter increasing from one to about a dozen cells. When the latter number is exceeded a cavity arises, the outer layer becomes the wall of this early monodermic phase, and the inner core is massed together.

With equal rapidity, however, a further differentiation of this inner core into a layer of flattened cells and a knob of more cubic ones is now inaugurated, the former arranging themselves into the inner wall of what then becomes the didermic blastocyst, the latter being at the outset a local thickening of this inner layer. The outer layer forms a closed sac over and above the inner layer and the thickened knob. The outer layer is what the author has called the trophoblast, the inner layer the hypoblast, the thickened knob containing the material out of which both the epiblast and the hypoblast that are going to contribute towards the formation of the embryo itself will be evolved.

This takes place simultaneously with a rapid extension in size of the didermic blastocyst.

The embryonic knob may be said to have a more flattened and a more convex surface; the former is applied against the trophoblast, the latter protrudes into the cavity of the blastocyst. Where these two surfaces meet, the peripheral hypoblast and the embryonic knob are connected together.

Soon, however, the convex surface of the embryonic knob is seen to be gradually converted into a cell layer, which remains in connection with the peripheral hypoblast, but which gradually becomes separated from the rest of the embryonic knob.

An expanse of cells has then been interpolated into the primitive hypoblast of the early didermic stages, in the region where the embryo is going to be evolved— i.e., in the region of the embryonic shield.

As yet the epiblast is, however, not expanded into a shield, but folded together in the embryonic knob. The first indication of its expansion is a dehiscence in the central portion of the knob, by which the hemispherical knob becomes converted into a hollow cup. The upper rim of this cup at the same time becomes confluent with the trophoblast that overcaps it, the convexity of the cup becomes lessened, and the trophoblast then no longer covers the embryonic epiblast. Finally, the convexity altogether disappears, the hollow cup surface is stretched, and the flat or slightly curved embryonic shield has come into existence. The hypoblast below the embryonic shield is much less flattened than the peripheral hypoblast.

This may be called the final stage of the didermic blastocyst. It is directly comparable to the similar stage of other mammals, and somewhat more indirectly to that of the Sauropsida, with a considerable amount of food-yolk.

The formation of mesoblast, with which we will not here occupy ourselves, is very soon inaugurated.

The phenomena described above leave no doubt but that the wall of the tran