614 Proceedings. 



legislation on the preservation of native or the introduction of foreign fishes. 

 As far as I have been able to make out, some locality in Cook Strait— say in 

 the neighbourhood of Wellington — would be the most suitable place for such 

 an institution. Perhaps, when the Wellington University College is estab- 

 lished, it may be found possible to combine the Professorship of Biology 

 with the Directorship of the Colonial Marine Laboratory. 



As you are aware, attempts have been made this year towards a sort of 

 federation of learned societies in the British Empire, a movement which 

 may be said to have commenced when the British Association met at 

 Montreal two years ago. The Eoyal Society of New South Wales has called 

 a prehminary meeting of the proposed " Australasian Association for the 

 Advancement of Science," and has invited the British Association to send 

 delegates to a meeting at Sydney in 1888. The difficulties in the way of 

 such a scheme are great and obvious, but the advantages to men of science 

 in these colonies would be so immense that I sincerely hope my friend and 

 fellow-student. Professor Liversidge, who appears to be the prime mover in 

 the matter, will succeed in his endeavours. Every naturalist in these 

 colonies must of necessity suffer from an ever-present sense of the immense 

 disadvantages he labours under through his isolation from other workers. 

 The ideas which at home he would absorb without effort in ordinary inter- 

 course with others, must here be acquhed, if at all, by a laborious course of 

 reading ; so that a man with limited leisure and limited capacity for assimi- 

 lation feels himself getting gradually out of touch with the onward move- 

 ment, and looks forward with dread to the time when he shall have become 

 hopelessly fossilized. 



I have often wished that the Eoyal Society of London, the great parent 

 of_ all scientific societies in the Empire, could adopt towards those men of 

 science who labour inpartibus infidelium some such system as the Eoman 

 Curia adopts with regard to Colonial bishops — summon them to head- 

 quarters every few years. Unfortunately, in our case there is no body of 

 faithful to pay expenses, so I fear the matter is hopeless. But an Austral- 

 asian Association, if only it can be kept going, might do a great deal 

 towards remedying the evil, by allowing widely- separated workers to meet 

 and exchange ideas. The main difficulty is, of course, the great distance 

 separating the chief towns of Australasia, and the consequent expense to 

 which members attending the meeting would be put. 



In conclusion, I wish to make a few remarks upon some important 

 recent advances in biology. Everyone has heard of the discovery by De 

 Graaf in Germany, and by Baldwin Spencer in England, of a median eye 

 in certain lizards, and notably in the Tuatara. The organ in question ia 

 very minute — barely visible to the naked eye— and is embedded in the fibrous 

 tissue filling up an aperture between the parietal bones on the roof of the 

 skull. The skin over this "parietal foramen" is frequently semi-trans- 

 parent, so that the eye, small as it is, is probably not entirely functionless. 

 In structure, it is remarkable for agreeing, not with the ordinaiy paired 

 eyes of vertebrates, but with those of many invertebrates. It is connected 

 by a nerve with a part of the brain called the " third ventricle," thus having 

 precisely the relations of that apparently anomalous organ the "pineal 

 gland," which, lying as it does in the very centre of the human brain, was 

 considered by Descartes to be the seat of the soul. 



Eesearches carried on during the last few years by Ahlborn and other 

 observers pointed to the conclusion that the pineal body was to be looked 

 upon as a rudimentary eye, or at least as a sensory organ of some sort ; but 

 the demonstration of this view by the discovery of well-formed though 

 minute median eyes in existing vertebrates, may fairly be called one of the 

 most important anatomical discoveries of this generation, and well worthy 

 to rank alongside another biological discovery which awakened a great deal 

 of interest in the colonies two years ago — that of tiie fact that the mono- 

 tremes (Platypus and Echidna) are viviparous, and have meroblastic eggs, 

 like reptile and birde 



