PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 239 



coming forward with new views, based upon the most elaborate re- 

 searches. And concerning such views, he felt that he could do just 

 then little more than admire them, and sit down and follow them out, 

 and be content therewith. He considered, as he had said, that it was 

 a most valuable paper which had been read to the meeting, and he was 

 astounded at the immense amount of painstaking research which it dis- 

 played. 



The President inquired whether any Fellow could inform him which 

 was the best reagent to use in the researches he was making. He 

 had been made acquainted with the value of chromic acid by Mr. 

 Power, of St. Bartholomew's Hospital ; but he thought that there were 

 some who used now a solution of bichromate of potash with some- 

 thing else in it, and which, while it produced the same effect as 

 chromic acid, did not render the objects with which they were dealing 

 so brittle as that substance. 



Mr. Stevenson suggested that the complement to the solution 

 mentioned by the President was sulphate of soda. 



Mr. Slack said, that though he could not pretend to discuss the 

 merits of the President's paper on the grounds of comparative anatomy, 

 he wished to make a remark on the allusion made by the President as 

 to the importance of uniting the teleological idea with the morpho- 

 logical. He had paid a good deal of attention to the controversies 

 arising out of that mode of viewing natural objects, and had been 

 strongly impressed with the truth of the statement that there was 

 really no contradiction between the distinct recognition of teleology 

 and that method of science which traced morphological changes from 

 their lowest to their highest types. It was often found that the two 

 schools were in deadly hostility to each other ; but tracing, according 

 to the modern principle of morphology, the various steps in the 

 development of an organ did not preclude the belief that such organ 

 was designed for particular use. 



The President said that in working out a subject morphologically, 

 the morphological and teleological ideas should be kept perfectly dis- 

 tinct, but the inquirer should be able to give a purely morphological 

 reason for the results obtained, for if he were a true morphologist he 

 had no right to come in with teleology whatever. It would be seen 

 in the order of nature why certain subdivisions had taken place. A 

 remark in reference to the lower part of the cartilage on which the 

 tongue of the sturgeon hung would illustrate this. The sturgeon did 

 not subdivide its hyoid arch in the same manner as osseous fishes, but 

 the subdivisions take place much higher up. He had repeatedly said 

 that the lower portion of the arch was the " symplectic," to which Prof. 

 Huxley had demurred, and his objection had proved to be valid; 

 for when he (the President) had weighed and worked out that sub- 

 division of the hyoid arch in the stui-geon, he had ultimately come by 

 anticipation to that peculiar subdivision of the second post-oral arch 

 which takes place in the frog to form the incus. Here was an ex- 

 j^lanation of certain morphological changes without going to teleology 

 at all. 



