THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 59 



plenty of other Ungulates in the same place at the same time ; why 

 did not they acquire long necks also? It may be noted that there 

 almost seems to be something special in the nature of the giraffe, as 

 it is the only mammal which has horns when it is born. Another 

 objection is the imperfection of the geological record, and the 

 absence of intermediate forms. The answer to this seems to me to 

 be that the geological record is less imperfect than might reason- 

 ably have been expected ; and that intermediate forms do exist, or 

 have existed and left traces, in greater numbers than we had a 

 right to anticipate. Amphioxus is a celebrated instance. The 

 wing of the young ostrich is covered by curious scale-like plumes, 

 and has three phalanges to the principal finger instead of the 

 two possessed by most other birds, thereby approaching reptiles. 

 The cerebellum in Aplacentia resembles birds in the dispropor- 

 tionate development of the median lobe, and this is coexistent 

 with other important bird-like characters ; as, for instance, the 

 oviparus reproduction and meroblastic ovum of Echidna and 

 Ornithorhynchus, their possession of a cloaca and of jaws elongated 

 to form a beak. The double uterus of the Marsupialia, &c. ; 

 the fossil OdontormcBj &c, or toothed birds ; and the well-known 

 Archceopteryx, are intermediate forms, and instances might be 

 multiplied to a great extent did space permit. Everyone who has 

 attempted any kind of zoological or botanical classification knows 

 how he has been puzzled by intermediate forms ; but every fresh 

 form found is taken as a fresh basis, and forms are asked for 

 intermediate between that and the nearest known ; so that until 

 the whole chain is completely found, which is not likely ever to be 

 the case, there must still be a demand for missing links. Again, it 

 is said that there is not always that steady progress in the geologi- 

 cal record from the simple to the complex which might have been ex- 

 pected ; as, for instance, Scudder found an insect as early as the 

 Devonian furnished with the stridulating apparatus of male locustidse ; 

 and the highest form of the Molusca, the Cephalopoda, were more 

 numerous in later geological periods than they are now. On the 

 other hand, fishes on the whole increase in complexity from the first 

 to the last geological period, and this is probably the case with the 

 average of other groups ; but there does not seem to be any reason 

 why creatures should not revert to a simpler condition if the sur- 

 roundings rendered it advantageous to them to do so, without that 

 fact telling against the survival of the fittest. 



