LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LOXDON. 2$ 



" My full conviction of the truth of the Development theory- 

 was definitely confirmed when I visited England for the first 

 time in 1866, and had the fortune of becoming personally 

 acquainted with such renowned British naturalists as Charles 

 Darwin, Charles Lyell, Thomas Huxley, and others. Especially 

 invaluable to me was the exchange of ideas, when I visited Down, 

 near Beckenham, and was able to draw a fund of information and 

 suggestion from the rich imagination of my unattainable master 

 and model, Charles Darwin. 



" After attempting, iu my ' General Morphology ' in 1866, to 

 show the most important bearings of Dar^dn's theory upon 

 Comparative Anatomy and Embryology as a whole (so as to 

 explain Ontogeny through Phylogeny), I endeavoured for the 

 next ten years to establish on a firm basis the network of 

 causation underlying these two sciences ; and to demonstrate 

 the unity of embryonic formation throughout the whole kingdom 

 of the Metazoa, by the application of the principle of biogenesis 

 to the theory of germinal layers. In this research I was guided 

 by the ingenious comparison which Prof Huxley had drawn 

 in 1848 between the two germinal layers of Vertebrates and 

 the two simple layers of cells of which the body of Medusa is 

 built up. It proved an especial pleasure to me that almost 

 contemporaneous with my Gastrsea theory (1872) one of the most 

 distinguished young British naturalists. Prof. E. Bay Lankester, 

 grasped — independently of me — the same idea. 



" In another sphei*e — the interesting classification of the 

 E-hizopoda — I came into close and friendly intercourse with one 

 of the first specialists of these remarkable Protozoa, the late 

 Dr. William B. Carpenter. 



" In 1876, on the occasion of my first visit to the British 

 Association, in Glasgow, I came into still further relations to 

 British Biology, which have proved most successful and fortunate 

 for me. The Naturalists of the ' Challenger ' (which had just 

 returned from its four-years' glorious voyage round the world) 

 were there exhibiting the wonderful collections of their Deep 

 Sea soundings, and among them the fabulous new world of the 

 ' Eadiolarian ooze.' 



" As I had published a ' Monograph of the Eadiolaria ' in 1862, 

 the working out of this rich material was entrusted to me by the 

 Director of the ' Challenger ' Staff, Sir Wyville Thomson ; and after 

 his death, this and other new material was placed at my disposal in 

 the most liberal manner by his successor, Mr. John Murray. The 

 result was, that for thirteen years I was engaged almost entirely 

 on the working up of the ' Challenger' material; and I had 

 thus the good fortune of describing a great number of new 

 Eadiolaria, Sponges, MeduscT, and Siphonophora in this monu- 

 mental work of the British nation, and of applying in their 

 systematic arrangement the phylogenetic principles of Darwin's 

 theory. 



