XXXVl PEOCEEDINGS OF THE 



evidences they rely upon ; and these evidences can only be derived 

 from and tested by sound systematic Biology, which must resume, 

 and is resuming, its proper position in the ranks of science, controlled 

 and guided iu its course by the results of those theories for which it 

 has supplied the bases *. If the absolute immutability of races is 

 no longer to be relied upon, the greater niunber of them (whether 

 genera, species, or varieties) are at the present or any other geolo- 

 gical period practically circumscribed within more or less definite 

 limits. The ascertaining those limits in every detail of form, struc- 

 ture, habit, and constitution, and the judicious appreciation of the 

 very complicated relations borne to each other by the different races 

 so limited, are as necessary as the supplementing the scantiness of 

 data from the depths of Teutonic consciousness or by the vivid 

 flashes of Italian imagination, or as the magnifying minute and as yet 

 undeveloped organisms with a precision beyond what is fully justified 

 by our best instruments. 



I am, however, far from denying, on the one hand, how much 

 biological science has of late been raised, since it has been brought 

 to bear, through well-developed theories and hypotheses, upon the 

 history of our globe and of the races it has borne, and, on the other, 

 how very much the systematic basis upon which it rests has been 

 improved and consolidated by the assiduous use of the microscope 

 and the dissecting-linife ; but I would insist upon the necessity of 

 equal abihty being applied to the intermediate processes of method 

 or nomenclature and classification, which form the connecting-link 

 between the labours of the anatomist and the theorist, reducing the 

 observations of the one to forms available for the arguments of the 

 other. All three (the minute observer, the systematist, and the 

 theorist), thus assisting each other, equally contribute to the general 

 advancement of science ; and for all practical application the syste- 

 matist' s share of duty is certainly the most important. 



The quicksands to which I have alluded as besetting this the 

 foundation of biological science may be classed as imperfect data and 

 false data, imperfect method and false method. To show what pro- 

 gress is making in removing or consolidating them, it may be useful 

 to consider what these data are, and what are our means of fixing 

 them so as to be readily available for use. 



It must, in the first place, be remembered that the races whose 

 relations to each other we study can only be present to our minds in 



* The great importance of morphology and classification, the elements of 

 systematic biology, has been forcibly illustrated by Professor Flower in his last 

 year's introductory lectu)-e at the Boyal College of Surgeons. 



