96 AJS^IOTEESAEY ADDEESS. 



that the next address, if I should have to give it, will be much 

 shorter, and I hope less wearisome. 



POSTSCRIPT. 



Progressive Development. — Some physiologists have lately, on 

 embryological grounds, advocated the doctrine of evolution ; but 

 Professor Alexander Agassiz is of a different opinion, and his 

 authority on the subject is undeniably very great. In his admir- 

 able and exhaustive Address on " Palaeontological and Embryo- 

 logical Development," delivered in August, 1880, at the Boston 

 Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, he tells us for instance that " the Cidaridae retain unchanged 

 from the earliest time to the present day " the same peculiar cha- 

 racters — that, " among the fossil Echinoderms of the oldest periods, 

 we have not as yet discovered the earliest type from which we 

 could derive either the star-tishes, ophiurians, sea-urchins, or holo- 

 thurians " — and that, with respect to the " speculations regarding 

 the origin of certain groups," "we are building in the air." And he 

 adds : "It seems hardly credible that a school which boasts for its 

 very creed a belief in nothing which is not warranted by common 

 sense should descend to such trifling." This is hard hitting! 



See also Mr. Lap worth's paper in the ' Annals and Magazine of 

 Natural History,' for April, 1880, on the geological distribution 

 of the Ehabdophora (graptolites), ia which he says: "The more 

 complex genera seem to have been the first to appear, .... inter- 

 mixed with simple forms." 



Sir Wyville Thomson, in his lately published ' Report on the 

 scientific results of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger,'' states as one 

 of his general conclusions that " the character of the abyssal fauna 

 refuses to give the least support to the theory which refers the 

 evolution of species to extreme variation guided only by natural 

 selection." It must be remembered that the title of Mr. Darwin's 

 great work is ' The origin of species by means of natural selection,' 

 this being the only caiise assigned for the origin of species, or in 

 other words for their derivation by evolution from other and pre- 

 existing species. 



