41 
SOME REMARKABLE FACTS. 
By J. L. KERR, M.D., C.M., F.R.S., (Edinburgh). 
March 8rd, 1891. 
In this paper the writer endeavoured to make a continuous 
story, which by taking no notice of the limits of time and space 
should illustrate how a fish became an amphibian. It was 
shown how the swimming bladder of a fish became a modified 
lung, in the mud fishes. 
Then taking the history of the development of a frog, it was 
shown how the egg hatched into a true fish, the tadpole, which 
breathed by gills, and which would die by suffocation, out of the 
water ; following on, the tadpole developed legs, lost its gills, and 
became an air breathing amphibian. 
The archeopterix, was next described, how it was a reptile in 
some points, whilst at the same time, it was a bird, because it 
had true feathers. 
The pterodactyl, which was a bird in many of its character- 
istics, was described as closely allied to the bats, which are the 
lowest of the mammals. 
It was shown how the mammals must have had a common 
ancestor, because they all had only seven vertebrae in the neck; 
because they all had, or their ancestors all had, five toes, and 
how all their bones and muscles, blood vessels and nerves are 
homologous. 
The writer then left it to be inferred that if the living creatures 
were not evolved one from the other, from lower to higher types, 
that at least there was a gradual upward improvement in type all 
along the line of animal existence, and that they were not created 
all at one time. 
It seemed to the writer no less wonderful and no derogation 
to the power of the Creator, that there should be a gradual 
evolution, rather than one creation of all the types of animals at 
one time. 
COLERIDGE’S ‘‘ANCIENT MARINER.” 
By Rev. J. MARSHALL MATHER. March 10th, 1891. 
Mr. Mather observed at the outset that the most prominent 
characteristic of Coleridge’s poetry, was its exquisite and original 
melody of versification. The very sound charmed the ear and 
the soul, and in that respect he considered that Coleridge 
