JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ROYAL MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 



APRIL 1904. 



TRANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY. 



IV. — The President's Address: The Evolution of Vertebrate 



Animals in Time. 



By Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S. 



(Delivered January 20th, 1904.) 



In my Anniversary Address to you last year, I directed attention 

 to what is known of the History of the great groups of the 

 Invertebrata in past geological times, and I pointed out to you, 

 that although we could not trace back the phylogeny of these to 

 a common stem, yet we were able to show that every individual 

 group whose appearance is recorded in the various sedimentary 

 deposits, and can be traced upwards through successive ages, marks 

 also the evolution of its progeny; some, like the giant Oak and 

 Plane-tree, putting forth many wide-spreading branches ; others, 

 like the Bamboo of the tropics, attaining great length with years, 

 but no lateral expansion; some families, like the Trilobites, the 

 Graptolites and the Eurypterida, reaching perfection in Palaeozoic 

 times, and then disappearing ; whilst others, having put forth great 

 vigour in the past, have left, like some ancient tree, but one living 

 branch to tell of its past greatness. 



Before proceeding with my address to the Fellows of the Royal 

 Microscopical Society, I must apologise to them in that I have for 

 a second time diverted their thoughts from the field of the Micro- 

 scope to the field of Nature ; but every apologist has his excuses also. 



Last year I spoke of many minute organisms (which I illus- 

 trated on the screen), whose whole body would not fill the aperture 

 of a Microscope. 



This year I propose to speak of Vertebrate animals, many of 

 which are of such large size that one of them would easily fill 



April 20th, 1904. l 



