642 Proceedings. 



thesis that there are some fixed laws of life which have 

 governed this pregressiou or evolution, is almost forced upon 

 us by the analogies of the inorganic world. To discover these 

 laws is a search worthy of the highest human intellects. 

 Darwin, Wallace, Herbert Spencer, and others have aj^plied 

 themselves to the task, and have thrown some light upon it ; 

 yet their views diverge, and none of them have been confirmed 

 by facts as regards their bolder generalisations. Apparently 

 the science of biology is now in about the same position as 

 that of astronomy was in the time of Copernicus, perhaps even 

 less advanced, and, considering the very much greater difilculty 

 of the subject, it may be a very long time before the combined 

 efforts of the human minds that are striving to unravel its 

 mysteries will have advanced our real knowledge of biology to 

 a similar position to that in which astronomy now stands. 

 But if we adhere to the sound methods of inductive philosophy, 

 and accept no hypotheses as truths until they have been 

 thoroughly established by facts, our progress, if slow, will be 

 certain and sure. The gathering of facts is work in which all 

 careful observers can co-operate : the correlating of the facts 

 and divining their significance requires the genius which is 

 given to few. It seems to me that palaeontology is at this 

 epoch perhaps the most deeply interesting field of study, as 

 there only can we hope to find evidence of the true way in 

 which new species have arisen. In the " Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica," ninth edition, under the heading " Biology," it is 

 stated : " The only perfectly safe foundation for the doctrine 

 of evolution lies in the historical, or, rather, archaeological, 

 evidence that particular organisms have arisen by the gradual 

 modification of their predecessors, which is furnished by fossil 

 remains. That evidence is daily increasing in amount and in 

 weight, and it is to be hoped that the comparison of the actual 

 pedigree of these organisms with the phenomena of their 

 development may furnish some criterion by which tlie validity 

 of phylogenetic conclusions, deduced from the facts of em- 

 bryology alone, may be satifactorily tested." The special 

 geological epochs which appear favourable to such discoveries 

 are the Mesozoic or Secondary, in wdiich the first traces of 

 bird-life have been found, and also that great abundance of 

 gigantic sauriaus which is so wonderful to us; and the Kaino- 

 zoic, or Tertiary, and Eecent strata, which in their lowest 

 beds give evidence of a new order of life, the great placental 

 mammals, and in the latest of which human remains are first 

 found. Up to the present time all theories of the evolution of 

 life on our globe are practically unsupported by palaeontology ; 

 and, until something more convincing to ordinary minds than 

 Huxley's "horse series" has been brought to light, cautious 

 people like myself must bo content to remain inquirers alike 



