6 
inclined to teach that all that is marvellous, all that is beautiful in 
this wonderful world of ours is simply the effect of what we may 
call the unguided forces of nature. Now, I believe that all must, 
and will allow that variations in living beings which benefit the 
owner are likely to be perpetuated, and that the fittest for the 
battle of life are likely to survive, and that in this way many won- 
derful changes in the descendants of animals and plants may be 
accounted for ; but these laws do not reach far enough to explain 
away what I believe is a self-evident fact—that such a wonderful 
skeleton as that, is evidence of design, and of a guiding Hand, and 
that Hand belonging to one Almighty and all-wise. It is so 
important now-a-days to have some firm basis, for even the most 
elementary of Theological beliefs, viz., uhat there isan Almightyand 
all-wise Creator, that I do beg of you when observing these beautiful 
natural objects so marvellously adapted to their purposes, to think 
a little deeper, and recognise that chance variations perpetuated by 
their helpfulness to the owner, will not, cannot, displace the evidence 
of design as seen even in such a humble organism as this beautiful 
sponge, Euplectella, or Venus Flower Basket. 
The paper was well illustrated by diagrams and microscopic 
preparations. A good collection of modern and fossil sponges was 
also on the table. 
DecemsBer 1iru, 1886. 
There was a good attendance of members in the Council Chamber, 
the President in the chair, and the Secretary read the following 
paper on 
DEGRADED FORMS OF ANIMAL LIFE. 
I have no doubt most of my audience are familiar with Charles 
Kingsley’s ‘‘ Water Babies,” and that they remember, recorded 
therein, ‘‘The History of the Great and Famous Nation of the 
Doasyoulikes,” who through their refusal to perform the part 
allotted to them in Nature, gradually lost all their endowments as 
human beings, and sank from bad to worse, until their last sur- 
viving descendant was shot by Paul du Chaillu in the African 
forest—a sad but instructive example of Degeneration, a history 
full of truth, as all Kingsley’s writings are. 
For, whether we study the histories of ancient and modern 
empires, or whether we interest ourselves in the life histories of our 
