XX XIV PEOCEEDINGS, 



The Peestdent then announced that this was probably the last 

 meeting which the Society would hold in the "Watford Public 

 Library, which had been its head-quarters for the last eighteen 

 years. It was scarcely necessary to allude to the difficulty of 

 hearing the lectures at this and the preceding meeting owing 

 to the noise made by the carpentering class in the part of the room 

 separated from that in which they were assembled only by a 

 removable partition ; for after the present meeting they could not 

 get the promise of a room at all. The Council had therefore 

 entered into negociations with the Governors of the Endowed 

 Schools, and had arranged to transfer thither the head-quarters 

 of the Society at the end of the present year. 



Okdinaut Meeting, 17th Janiiaet, 1893, at Watford. 



JoHK HoPKiNSOif, Esq., F.L.S., E.G.S., etc.. President, in the 

 Chair. 



Mrs. Kember was elected a Member of the Society. 



Mr. E,. Casson, "Woodfoi'd Road, Watford; Mr. Percy Manning, 

 North End House, Watford ; and Mr. A. T. Murray, Harpley, 

 Stratford Road, Watford, were proposed for membership. 



The President said that he was pleased to see such a large 

 attendance of members at the first meeting of the Society in its 

 new quarters, the Watford Endowed Schools ; and he announced 

 that the Society's bookcases, books, and other effects would be 

 removed on the following day to the Governors' board-room 

 upstairs, which would be open for the exchange of books on 

 the first Tuesday in each month from 7 '30 to 8 p.m., as well 

 as on the conclusion of the meetings of the Society, which would 

 usually be held on the third Tuesday. 



A lecture was delivered, of which the following is an abridged 

 report : — 



" Man and Ape." By Arthur Stradling, M.R.C.S., F.Z.S. 



Mr. Stradling introduced his subject with an anecdote about 

 Dumas, the novelist. Dumas had a decided dash of black blood in 

 his veins, and someone once mentioned it in his presence, where- 

 upon he retorted : " Yes, you are quite right, my father was 

 a black man and my grandfather was a monkey, in fact. Sir, 

 my pedigree begins where yours leaves off." Without advocating 

 such an immediate descent of man from the monkey or ape, for 

 the terms were practically synonymous, he would now show some 

 points of affinity between them. 



Structurally, he said, there is less difference between man and 

 the higher monkeys than there is between the latter and the 

 inferior species of monkeys, the gulf between the human race and 

 the anthropoid apes being an intellectual one only ; but the 

 recognition of this real organic similarity had been long delayed 

 and was even now admitted with reluctance. The earliest guesses 

 at human anatomy were derived from the study of monkeys by 



