428 NOTICES OF THE MEETINGS [April 28. 
WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 
Friday, April 28. 
Sir Cuarzes Feziows, Vice-President, in the Chair. 
Proressor E. Forsss, F.R.S. 
On the manifestation of Polarity in the distribution of Organized beings 
in Time. 
Or the four relations among organized beings, viz: Affinity (or 
relation through homology), Analogy, Representation, and Polarity, 
the three first have been recognized in the distribution of beings in 
Geological Time ; the fourth has neither been observed nor sought 
for. The term itself is one not familiar in the language of Natural 
History, although proposed many years ago by the Swedish botanist 
Fries, and systematically employed by several naturalists for some 
time past. The word Polarity seems objectionable, since it has been 
appropriated with a peculiar signification by Physical philosophers. 
The sense in which it is employed by Naturalists, that of a manifes- 
tation of force of development at opposite poles of an ideal sphere, 
cannot however be indicated by any other word at present invented, 
implying as it does something very different from divergence and 
from antagonism, words which have been suggested as substitutes. 
The ordinary illustration of the relation of Polarity, in a natural 
history sense, is that representing the rela- 
tion of opposition or progression in oppo- 
site directions of the Animal and Vegeta- 
ble series ; the meeting point of both being 
at the points of lowest development of 
each (a, v, in the accompanying diagram), 
where the animal and vegetable natures 
are almost confounded, whilst the strongest 
manifestations of each are at A and V, the 
highest animals being farthest removed 
from the highest vegetables,—in other 
words, at opposite poles of the sphere of 
organized beings. 
The earnest desire implanted instinctively in every enquiring mind, 
to discover a law or scheme in arrangements of Nature, has given 
origin to many speculations concerning the distribution of life in 
geological time, all of them founded on facts more or less clearly 
KING|DOM 
