598 president's address. 



problems as symmetry in the natural system versus irregularity, as judicative o£ 

 the benevolence of an all- wise Creator? 



His only reply to Swainson is contained in his paper on the "Natural System 

 of Fishes," dated Elizabeth Bay, near Sydney, September 12ti, 1840, sent as a letter 

 to Dr. J. McClelland, of Calcutta, published in the Calcutta Journal of Nat. Hist., 

 July, 1841, and republished in the Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., Vol. ix., p. 197 (1842). 

 In this, he says: "I assure you that your excellent work on Cyprinidae has afford- 

 ed me the greatest delight, and the more so, inasmuch as I am convinced natural 

 arrangement is always best tested by accurate analysis, and also inasmuch as 1 

 am not by any means satisfied with Swainson's arrangement of Fishes. As from 

 ever\'thing Swainson writes there is information to be derived, so I assure you, 



his little volume on Reptiles and Fishes has not been lost on me I 



am often afraid of tmsting myself to Mr. Swainson's method of drawing analo- 

 gies between things in themselves wide apart The nearer two 



groups are in general structure, the more striking their parallel analogies will be; 

 and therefore I think, that by comparing fish witli fish, we may obtain more 

 striking analogies than by comparing them, as Swainson does, with Mammalia, 

 birds, or insects; at all events, we shall have less reason to distrust the efforts of a 

 fertile imagination. Still I am far from denying that such analogies as he 

 delights in exist in nature. I only say that they are dangerous things to deal 

 with, and that in his hands they often become far-fetched and even ludicrous" 

 (pp. 203, 204). 



Professor Ray Lankester, in his valuable Essay on "the History and Scope of 

 Zoology," points out that the history of Zoology as a science is the history of the 

 great biological doctrine of organic evolution as put forward, on a new basis, by 

 Charles Darwin in his "Origin of Species," published in the year 1859. It is a 

 long and involved story, and some of the details are still in question. 



W. S. Macleay's published work covers the period 1819-47. Therefore, in 

 time, as well as in character, in so far as it has to do with the significance of the 

 natural system and with the principles of classification, it is pre-Darwinian. 



What was needed then, no less than when Darwin offered it, in 1859, was what 

 Huxley said: "That which we were looking for, and could not find, was a hypo- 

 thesis respecting the origin of known organic forms, which assumed the operation 

 of no causes but such as cnuld be proved to be netually at work. We wanted not 

 to pin our faith to that or any other speculation, but to get hold of clear and 

 definite conceptions which could be brought face to face with facts and have their 

 validity tested. The 'Origin' provided us with the working-hypothesis we sought. 

 Moreover, it did the immense service of freeing us for ever from the dilemma — 

 refuse to accept the creation-hypothesis, and what have you to propose that can 

 be accepted by any cautious reasoner?" [Darwin's "Life," Vol. ii., p. 197]. 



In offering his working-hypothesis, Darwin first grouped his predecessors: 

 "Naturalists try to arrange the species, genera, and families in each class, on what 

 is called the Natural System. But what is meant by this system? Some authorj 

 look at it merely as a scheme for arranging together those living objects which 

 are most alike, and for separating tho.se which are most unlike; or as an artificial 

 means for enumerating, as briefly as possible, general propositions. 

 But many naturalists think that something more is meant by the Natural System; 

 they believe that it reveals the plan of the Creator; but unless it be specified whe- 

 ther in order, time or space, or what else is meant by the plan of the Creator, it 



