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ments, were laid before the meeting. It was 

 resolved that the Hon. Secretaries be instructed 

 to communicate with the Town Authorities, and 

 find out in what way their co-ojDeration would 

 be most effective to induce the British Asso- 

 ciation to visit Brighton. — Mr. J. Eobertson 

 then read a paper on " Professor Owen's General 

 Conclusions," in which his views respecting 

 species and the origin of life were criticised. 

 Owen had lived so long among dead animals 

 that, if it were possible to describe life by them, 

 no man was better qualified. He had been 

 taught by renowned teachers, had been stimu- 

 lated by rivals, and urged on by the applause of 

 the public, and yet, while he complained of 

 being misrepresented and misconceived, he had 

 less reason of complaint against others than 

 against himself. As a pupil of Cuvier, he 

 ought to have known Cuvier's views, and yet he 

 misrepresented him as saying that species were 

 mutable : the very opposite of his published 

 opinions. In his third and concluding volume 

 on the Vertebrates, he asserts that species were 

 mutable prior to the pleistocene, and since that 

 period all those co-existant with homo were 

 mutable or immutable only as he was. At other 

 times, he speaks of species being predestined for 

 man, and of an innate tendency to change, and 

 yet scoffs at Darwin and his theory. His ideas 

 respecting the origin of life were equally 

 contradictory and unsatisfactory. While he 

 desribed what was under his dissecting knife he 

 was trustworthy, but when he theorized he was 

 not to be followed. 



