BY THE PRESIDBNT. 91 



division was the first that made its appearanee." Mr. Davidson, 

 Avho has made the Brachiopoda his special and life-long- study, asks: 

 '* ^V\\y should a number of genera, such as Lingula, Discina, Crania, 

 and Rhynchonella, liave continued to be repi'esented vpith the same 

 characters, and often with but small modification in shape, during 

 the entire sequence of geological strata ? Why did they not offer 

 modifications or alter during those incalculable ages ? " He tells 

 me that the genera and species were immensely more varied and 

 numerous in the older than in subsequent formations. As to Trilo- 

 bites, an aberrant group of Crustacea, which are now quite extinct, 

 and included numerous sectional divisions, Professor Packard re- 

 gards them as allied to the strange and anomalous Limulus or king- 

 crab ; and the late Mr. Salter, in his exhaustive Monograph, 

 published by the Paloeontographical Society, says : "They meet us 

 in the earliest formation in which we have any abundant traces of 

 animal life, viz. the Zinffula-Qags. In this their commencement 

 we have some of the smallest and most rudimentary, as well as 

 some of the largest forms." 



All these different animals must have been originally accom- 

 panied by their food, which consisted partly of the kinds whose 

 hai'd remains have been preserved, but mainly of other animals of 

 a soft nature and microscopic size, of which no traces exist. 



Another illustration, taken from the animal kingdom, has lately 

 occurred to me. The ' Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society ' 

 for last year contained a valuable paper by Mr. Jennings Hinde, 

 on Annelid Jaws from the Cambro- Silurian, Silurian, and Devonian 

 formations in Canada, and from the Lower Carboniferous in 

 Scotland, in which these organisms were very numerous. They 

 were classified from their resemblance to existing forms under 

 seven genera, and included fifty-five different species. Here we 

 have number, variety, and correspondence with present life in a 

 group of the marine invertebrate fauna, which has hitherto re- 

 ceived scant attention. In fact, as far as we can go back in time, 

 and examine the most ancient fossiliferous strata within our reach, 

 we see the same diversity as now exists, instead of a very few and 

 simple forms. The Annulosa, to which annelids belong, have a 

 considerably advanced degree of organisation. 



In the ' Memoirs of the Boston Society of JS'atural History,' for 

 last year, a well-known entomologist, Mr. Scudder, remarked that 

 apparently "the general type of wing-structure in insects has 

 remained unaltered from the earliest times." 



With respect to botany, I would refer my hearers to an ad- 

 mirable essay by Dr. Carruthers, the Keeper of Botany at the 



