XXXiv REPORT—1846. 
animals on the coasts of America and Europe—the specialities of the marine 
zoology of the British seas called for by this Association—the past and pre- 
sent distribution of the great Mediterranean Flora ;—and lastly, it applies 
the knowledge we possess of the distribution of plants to the elucidation of 
the history of the superficial detritus, termed by geologists the ‘* Northern 
Drift.” 
Amid the numerous subjects for reflection which the perusal of this me- 
moir occasions, I must now restrict myself to two brief comments. First, 
to express my belief that even Humboldt himself, who has written so much 
and so admirably on Alpine floras, will admit that our associate’s explanation 
of the origin of identity removes a great stumbling-block from the path of 
botanical geographers. Secondly, having myself for some years endeavoured 
to show, that the Alpine glacialists had erroneously applied their views, as 
founded on terrestrial phenomena, to large regions of Northern Europe, 
which must have been under the sea during the distribution of erratic blocks, 
gravel and boulders, I cannot but consider it a strong confirmation of that 
opinion, when I find so sound a naturalist as Edward Forbes sustaining the 
same view by perfectly independent inferences concerning the migration of 
plants to isolated centres, and by a studious examination and comparison of 
all the sea shells associated with these transported materials. And if I mis- 
take not, my friend Mr. Lyell will find in both the above points, strong evi- 
dences in support of his ingenious climatal theories. 
Recent as the blocks and boulders to which I have alluded may seem 
to be, they were however accumulated under a glacial sea, whose bottom 
was first raised to produce that connexion between the continent and 
Britain, by which the land animals migrated from their parent East to our 
western climes; a connexion that was afterwards broken through by the se- 
paration of our islands, and by the isolation in each of them of those terres- 
trial races which had been propagated to it. This latter inference was also, 
indeed, thoroughly sustained by the researches of Professor Owen, commu- 
nicated to this Association; first, in the generalization by which his report 
on the Extinct Mammals of Australia is terminated, and still more in de- 
tailed reference to our islands in his recently published work ‘On the Ex- 
tinct Fossil British Mammalia, —a work which he has stated in his dedication 
originated at the call of the British Association. Professor Owen, who fills a 
Vice-President’s chair, adds, indeed, greatly to the strength of our present 
Meeting, by also acting as the President of one of our Sections, which having 
in its origin been exclusively occupied in the study of Medicine, is now more 
peculiarly devoted to the cultivation of Physiology. Under such a leader I 
have a right to anticipate, that this remodelled Section will exhibit evidences 
of fresh vigour, and will clearly define the vast progress that has been made 
in general and comparative anatomy since the days of Hunter and of Cuvier, 
for so large a part of which we are indebted to our eminent associate. I 
may; indeed, confidently announce, from what I know of the communica- 
tions about to be made to us by Professor Owen on anatomical homologies, 
that our Members will be highly gratified in seeing our next volume en- 
hanced with subjects from his pen, which hitherto have almost exclusively 
occupied the attention of continental anatomists. 
Assembled in a county which has the good fortune to have been illus- 
trated by the attractive history of the naturalist of Selborne, I am confident 
that our Fourth Section, to whose labours I would next advert, will yield a 
rich harvest, the more so as it is headed by that great zoologist who has en- 
riched the adjacent Museum of the Naval Hospital at Haslar with so many 
animals from various parts of the world, and has so arranged them as to render 
