164 Transactions of the Society. 



Anthropoid Apes are seldom found in a fossil state ; the earliest 

 human remains known are met with in Caves, in Peat deposits^ 

 or, as represented by their weapons, in river valley gravels. Fossil 

 monkeys are extremely rare. A single tooth referred to Macacus 

 pliocamus was obtained from the Brick-earth of Grays, Essex. 

 Of the Lemurs, Adapts and Nccrolemur occur in the Eocene of 

 Hordwell, Hampshire, and the older Tertiaries of France ; other 

 remains have been obtained from the Miocene of Dakota, North 

 America ; and Megaladapis, a giant Lemur, from the newer 

 Tertiaries of Madagascar. 



I would only remark in conclusion, that the geological record, 

 so far as preserved to us, gives proof of progressive advance in 

 vertebrate life, and we find throughout the rocks undoubted evi- 

 dence of development from lower to higher forms. Groups like 

 the Sauropterygia, Ichthyopterygia, the Cetacea and Sirenia, are 

 so evidently exceptions, and present cases of retrogression so> 

 divergent from the rest of the biological series, that they do not 

 impugn the general conclusion of a gradual onward progression 

 of life to a higher condition of existence. 



A few instances of lowly persistent forms occur in the verte- 

 brata as among the invertebrata. Thus the Cyclostomi and the- 

 Elasmobranchi have probably lived on but little changed from th& 

 Devonian, or even earlier, until recent times ; but the great 

 majority of vertebrates give evidence of evolution, not only in 

 their orders and families, but in their individual development. 

 Nor can it be doubted that the advance of mankind from the rude 

 state of primitive savages to the present conditions of culture and 

 development in the arts and sciences, attests the same progress in 

 the human race towards a higher life to which all nature moves. 



My friend, Dr. H. Dukinfield Scott, who will presently occupy 

 this chair, which, by your favour, I have been called upon to fill 

 for the past two years, will be able to tell you that in his special 

 branch of investigation (Paleobotany), he has found it to be indis- 

 pensable not only to know the microscopic structure of living 

 plants in order to compare them with those of fossil ones ; but 

 also to know both the living and the fossil plants themselves, the 

 former as they are met with at the present day, and their ancestors 

 as they are found in the rocks. 



I shall thus, I hope, obtain from my successor some countenance- 

 for my temerity, in having ventured to detain you so long this 

 evening with my sketch of the ancestors of the Vertebrata, which 

 follows as Part II. of my Address to you in January 1903. 



