MARINE BfOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION. 2? 



very often by hypotheses not capable of demonstration. I 

 may say that I have no sympathy with that feeling. You 

 cannot in the pursuit of science get rid of hypotheses. 

 They are absolute necessities and instruments of research. 

 The experiments conducted by our new Society will go far 

 to prove or disprove many of the hypotheses which are held 

 in respect to the origin and development of life. I remem- 

 ber thirty years ago reading in a very remarkable book, 

 which made a great sensation at the time^ — a book written 

 by Hugh Miller, a man of considerable genius, not only on 

 account of his command of literary style, but also on account 

 of that which Professor Tyndall has so much emphasised, 

 " the scientific use of the imagination ;" I remember, I say, 

 seeing in this book, which was published some six or ten 

 years before Darwin's ^ Origin of Species,' and when the 

 author had to deal with the theory of descent in the older 

 forms in which it appears in the 'Vestiges of Creation,' 

 that the author ventured to suggest that the flat fishes 

 showed every indication of being a degenerate branch of 

 the round fishes. I thought at the time that that was one 

 of the wildest theories that could be conceived. It was 

 connected with the recently revived theory of possible 

 degradation from a higher organization. It now turns out 

 from various observations in aquaria in America, Sweden, 

 and elsewhere, that this strange imagination was perfectly 

 correct, and that there is good evidence for the belief that 

 the flat fishes have been derived from the round fishes. 

 The young of the common flounder, I believe, is born or 

 hatched in the round condition. This is a remarkable 

 indication of how pursuits such as are contemplated by this 

 Society may be of the greatest assistance to scientific men 

 in regard to the history of life. 



Granting that biology is one of the very highest branches 

 of natural science, I think I am right in saying that the sea 

 is the area in which and out of which we can best get at 

 some of the secrets of organic life. The sea, I may say, is 

 more rich in the variety of forms of life than the land. I 

 sometimes use the dredge from my yacht, and I never 

 empty the contents of the dredge without standing in 



