90 Transactions oftlie 



object. At length a time comes when it can be no longer viewed 

 with an ordinary object-glass ; and to trace its evolution and de- 

 velopment, we needs must have recourse to sections. It is mainly 

 with the result of observations made on such bisections, as well as 

 of dissections, that I wish to occupy your time to night. 



The pleasure you have afforded me in appointing me to the 

 honourable post of President has been dashed with a painful sense 

 of unfitness, so little have I lightened the labours of the Council ; 

 nor can I be a proper annahst to my fellow-workers. The breath- 

 less ardour with which I have followed my own hunt has left me 

 little leisure to give you an account of the country over which 

 I have so hotly ridden. Thomson, speaking of himself, in his 

 ' Castle of Indolence,' says, 



" He loathed much to write, ne cared to repeat." 



I must, however, excuse myself by saying that mine is secondary, 

 and not primary, indolence ; it is the idleness of labom*. An anec- 

 dote may illustrate my shortcomings with regard to this unchecked 

 research that leaves neither leisure nor patience for intellectual 

 stock-taking. My kindly task-master, now in Egypt — I refer to 

 Professor Huxley — gave me this scant praise at the conclusion of 

 my long piece of work, the " Shoulder-girdle." " Parker, you're 

 an idle fellow." " Why ? " asked I, in astonishment. " Why ? be- 

 cause you have made no abstract, and have left me to labour 

 through that heavy mass of work, for any and every idea I want 

 to extract from it," 



Some recent conversations with " Friends in Council " have 

 made me somewhat more easy about to-night's duty, for they have 

 informed me that I need not speak of things outside my measure, 

 that is, of other men's labours ; but that I may give some account 

 of my own. 



My own work. Gentlemen, is somewhat ambitious ; it relates to 

 the highest types of animal life, and to the crowning part of their 

 organization, namely, the " kingly-crowned head." Not relating, 

 indeed, to all the wondrous structures that are centred there ; but 

 to the box holding the precious brain, — the basket carrying the 

 organs of expression and of speech, — and the instruments used in 

 those all-important functions, breathing and swallowing. 



Thirty years ago my favourite author in these matters was 

 Sir Charles Bell, a good type of the Paley or Fitness school. Such 

 good reverential men loved to trace the handiwork of an infinitely 

 clever Contriver, who brought organisms into being in a moment — 

 monads or whales — the plan of each having been perfected before- 

 hand by a mode of thought peculiarly human. Looking from 

 another stand-point, and yet reverent as they, I have no quarrel, 

 even now, with this school. They but saw and understood things 



