Damcin- Wallace Celebration. 17 



His phylogenetic pedigrees have played a useful and im- 

 portant part as aids to the imagination and as familiarising 

 the mind with the idea of Descent, at a time when the 

 evolutionary conception was still obscure. They are intended 

 rather as artistic endeavours to picture what happened in the 

 past than as dogmatic statements of historical sequences. 



Haeckel, so distinguished in the laboratory, has, like 

 Darwin, Wallace and Hooker, a strongly developed Naturalist 

 side, shown by his scientific travels, in the Canaries, Ceylon, 

 and elsewhere. He, too, is a thorough Darwinian, who has 

 remained loyal to the principle of Natural Selection. 



A man of world-wide reputation, the leader on the 

 Continent of the ' Old Guard ' of evolutionary Biologists, 

 Prof. Haeckel is one whom our Society delights to honour, 

 and I ask you to transmit to him the Darwin- Wallace Medal, 

 as a testimony of our admiration and respect. 



I will go on at once to present the medal awarded to 

 Professor AUGUST WEISMANN. 



Like his countryman Prof. Haeckel, Prof. Weismann is 

 unfortunately unable to leave his University at this season of 

 the year, and those, especially, who have had the pleasure of 

 meeting him on former visits, will regret his absence to-day. 



Prof. Weismann has played a brilliant part in the develop- 

 ment of Darwinian theory, and is indeed the protagonist 

 of that theory in its purest form, retaining all that was the 

 peculiar property of Darwin and Wallace and eliminating 

 the traces of Lamarckism which still survived. 



It is not for me, on this occasion, to enter into his special 

 researches in Zoology : of the many original investigations 

 for which he is distinguished, that on the origin of the germ- 

 cells in Hydrozoa is peculiarly noteworthy, as having led up 

 to his great doctrine of the Continuity of the Germ-plasm as 

 the foundation of a Theory of Heredity. This doctrine, in- 

 volvino 1 the conclusion that all inherited variations must be 



O 



congenital, and that consequently there can be no hereditary 

 transmission of characters acquired during the life of the 

 individual, aroused the deepest interest, and that not only in 

 scientific circles. It has produced a lasting effect on Biology, 



c 



