South African Vegetation

Abstract

DURING the recent meeting of the British Association in South Africa, the South African Association for the Advancement of Science may be said to have acted as scientific hosts to their visitors, and in that capacity they certainly spared no effort to provide information as to South African scientific activities which would interest their visitors from the northern hemisphere. As a result, the number of the South African Journal of Science issued in December 1929, which contains some of the papers read at the 1929 meeting, provides an exceptionally favourable means of gaining a comprehensive impression of South African science. The president, Dr. Jan H. Hofmeyr, in an eloquent address pointed out that, since the first visit of the British Association in 1905, there has been a great increase in the facilities for higher education throughout South Africa, and the 27 graduates of 1905 had increased to 314 in 1928. There has naturally, therefore, been a great amount of valuable scientific work carried out throughout the country since 1905, and Dr. Hofmeyr emphasises, as the outstanding feature of this period, that the bulk of this work is due to the activities of South Africans. Scientific data are no longer the result of the sporadic activity of visitors from older communities with a longer academic history; they result from the continuous labours of a number of South African investigators, many of whom have received their training in South Africa.