BY THE PRESIDENT. 93 



"These considerations, however, involve the difficult question of 

 the origin of species ; and 1 will not pursue them further, except 

 hy suggesting the very great prohability that all existing species 

 have descended by modification from primeval forms, but at the 

 same time not admitting the hypothesis of Mr. Darwin that such 

 forms were very few or perhaps unique. In those strata which 

 contain our earliest records of the world's history, as great a diver- 

 sity of form is exhibited in the groups which we call genera and 

 sijecios as in the existing fauna ; and it seems evident that the plan 

 of the Creator, so far as we can comprehend it, has not been that of 

 progressive development." 



The above views of mine were published in 1862, not long after 

 the appearance of Mr. Darwin's work ; and I have not since seen 

 any reason for changing them. 



In 1877, when I had the honour of occupying the presi- 

 dential chair of the Biological Section of the British Association 

 at Plymouth, I said with respect to a brachiopod from the 

 Chalk and an existing brachiopod, which I considered distinct 

 species : " This question of identity depends, however, on the capa- 

 bility of hereditary persistence which some species possess ; and 

 although a certain degree of modification may be caused by an 

 alteration of conditions in the course of incalculable ages, our 

 knowledge is not sufiicient to enable us to do more than vaguely 

 speculate, and surely not to take for granted the transmutation of 

 species. We have no proof of anything of the kind. Devolution, 

 or succession, appears to be the law of nature ; evolution (in its 

 modern interpretation) may be regarded as the product of human 

 imagination. I am not a believer in the fixity of species, nor in 

 their periodical extinction and replacement by other species. The 

 notorious imperfection of the geological record ought to warn us 

 against such hasty theorisation." 



Dr. Wright, in his Address to the Geological Section of the 

 British Association at Bristol, in 1875, remarked that "Palae- 

 ontology affords no support to the hypothesis which seeks by a 

 system of evolution to derive all the varied forms of organic life 

 from pre-existing organisms of a lower type. As far as I have 

 been able to read the records of the rocks, I confess I have failed 

 to discover any linear series among the vast assemblage of extinct 

 species, which might form a basis and lend reliable biological 

 support to such a theory. Instead of a gradation upwards in certain 

 groups and classes of fossil animals, we find, on the contrary, that 

 their first representatives are not the lowest, but often highly 

 organised types of the class to which they belong." He then gave 



