ADDRESS BEFORE THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 47 



baur, Dohrn, Kay Lankester, Balfour and Gaskell, who, with many 

 others, have conducted careful and methodical inquiries into the stages 

 of development of numerous forms belonging to the two great divisions 

 of the animal kingdom. Invertebrates, as well as vertebrates, have been 

 carefully compared with each other in the bearing of their development 

 and structure on their affinities and descent, and the possible sequence 

 in the evolution of the Vertebrata from the Invertebrata has been dis- 

 cussed. The other method pursued by palaeontologists, of whom Hux- 

 ley, Marsh, Cope, Osborn and Traquair are prominent authorities, has 

 been the study of the extinct forms preserved in the rocks and the com- 

 parison of their structure with each other and with that of existing 

 organisms. In the attempts to trace the line of descent the imagination 

 has not unfrequently been called into play in constructing various con- 

 flicting hypotheses. Though from the nature of things the order of 

 descent is, and without doubt will continue to be, ever a matter of 

 speculation and not of demonstration, the study of the subject has been 

 a valuable intellectual exercise and a powerful stimulant to research. 



We know not as regards time when the fiat went forth, 'Let there be 

 Life, and there was Life.' All we can say is that it must have been in the 

 far-distant past, at a period so remote from the present that the mind 

 fails to grasp the duration of the interval. Prior to its genesis our earth 

 consisted of barren rock and desolate ocean. When matter became 

 endowed with Life, with the capacity of self -maintenance and of resist- 

 ing external disintegrating forces, the face of nature began to undergo 

 a momentous change. Living organisms multiplied, the land became 

 covered with vegetation and multitudinous varieties of plants, from 

 the humble fungus and moss to the stately palm and oak, beautified 

 its surface and fitted it to sustain higher kinds of living beings. Animal 

 forms appeared, in the first instance simple in structure, to be followed 

 by others more complex, until the mammalian type was produced. The 

 ocean also became peopled with plant and animal organisms, from the 

 microscopic diatom to the huge leviathan. Plants and animals acted 

 and reacted on each other, on the atmosphere which surrounded them 

 and on the earth on which they dwelt, the surface of which became 

 modified in character and aspect. At last Man came into existence. His 

 nerve-energy, in addition to regulating the processes in his economy 

 which he possesses in common with animals, was endowed with higher 

 powers. When translated into psychical activity it has enabled him 

 throughout the ages to progress from the condition of a rude savage to 

 an advanced stage of civilization; to produce works in literature, art 

 and the moral sciences which have exerted, and must continue to exert, 

 a lasting influence on the development of his higher Being; to make 

 discoveries in physical science; to acquire a knowledge of the structure 

 of the earth, of the ocean in its changing aspects, of the atmosphere and 



