502 



NATURE 



[September 20, iqoo 



THE BRADFORD MEETING OF THE 



BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



SECTION D. 



Opening Address by Ramsay H. Traquair, 

 LL.D., F.R.S. 



M.D. 



In opening to-day the sittings of the Zoological Section, I 

 must first express my sense of the honour which has been con- 

 ferred on me, in having been chosen as your President on this 

 occasion, and I may add that I feel it not only as an honour to 

 myself personally but also as a compliment to the field of 

 investigation in which the greater part of my own original work 

 has been done. It is a welcome recognition of the doctrine, 

 which I, and much more important men indeed than I, have 

 always maintained, namely, that Paleontology, however valu- 

 able, nay, indispensable, its bearings on Geology may be, is in 

 its own essence a part of Biology, and that its facts and its 

 teachings must not be overlooked by those who would pursue 

 the study of Organic Morphology on a truly comprehensive 

 and scientific basis. As I have asked on a previous occasion, 

 " Does an animal cease to be an animal because it is preserved 

 in stone instead of spirits ? Is a skeleton any the less a 

 skeleton because it has been excavated from the rock, instead of 

 prepared in a macerating trough ? " And I may now add — Do 

 animals, because they have been extinct for it may be millions 

 of years, thereby give up their place in the great chain of 

 organic being, or do they cease to be of any importance to 

 the evolutionist because their soft tissues, now no longer 

 existing, cannot be imbedded in paraffin and cut with a 

 Cambridge microtome ? 



These are theses which I think no one denies theoretically ; 

 but what of the practical application of the rule ? For though 

 cordially thanking my biological brethren for the honour they 

 have done me in placing me in this chair to-day, I must ask 

 them not to be offended if I say that in times past I have a few 

 things against some of them at least. I refer first to the apathy 

 concerning palreontological work, more especially where fishes 

 are concerned, which one frequently meets with in the writings 

 of biologists, as seen in the setting up of classifications and 

 theories and the erection of genealogical trees without any, or 

 with at least inadequate, inquiry as to whether such theories or 

 trees are corroborated by the record of the rocks. But more 

 vexatious still are the offhand proceedings of some biologists 

 who, when they wish to complete their generalisations on the 

 structure of a living organism, or group of organisms, by allu- 

 sion to those which in geological time have gone before, do not 

 take the trouble to consult the original palaeontological memoirs 

 or papers, or to make themselves in any way practically 

 acquainted with the subject, but derive their knowledge at 

 second or third hand from some text-book or similar work, 

 which may not in every case be exactly up to date on the 

 matters in question. Nay, more than this, I think I have 

 seen the authors of such text-books or treatises credited with 

 facts and illustrations which were due to the labours of hard- 

 working palaeontologists years before. 



But a better time, I am convinced, is not far off, when the 

 unity of all biological science will be recognised, not merely 

 theoretically, but also practically by workers in every one of its 

 branches. 



Of one thing I must, however, warn those who have hitherto 

 devoted their time exclusively to the investigation of things 

 recent, namely, WtaX a special training is necessary for the correct 

 interpretation of fossil remains, especially those of the lower 

 Vertebrata and many groups of Invertebrata. So it comes that 

 what looks to the uninitiated eye a mere confused mass of broken 

 bones or plates may to the trained observer afford a flood of 

 valuable light on questions of structure previously undetermined. 

 We must take into account the condition of the fossil as regards 

 mineralisation and crushing ; we must learn to recognise how 

 the various bones may be dislocated, scattered, or shoved over 

 each other, and to distinguish true sutures from mere fractures. 

 We must carefully correlate the positive results obtained from 

 one specimen with those afforded by others, and in this way it 

 happens that to make a successful restoration of the exo- or 

 endo-skeleton of a fossil fish or reptile may require years of 

 patient research. But the thought sometimes does come up in 

 my mind, that some people imagine that fossils, such as fishes, 

 occur in the rocks all restored and ready, so that the author of 



NO. 161 2, VOL. 62] 



such a restoration has no more scientific credit in his work thai> 

 if he were an ordinary draughtsman drawing a perch or a trout 

 for an illustrated book ! feut the student of fossil remains must 

 not only learn to see what does exist in the specimen he exam- 

 ines, but also to refrain from seeing things which are not there 

 — to know what he does not see as well as what he does see. 

 For many grave errors have arisen from want of this necessary- 

 training, as, for instance, where the under surface of a fish's 

 head has been described as the upper, or where markings of a 

 purely petrological character have been supposed to indicate 

 actual structures of the greatest morphological importance. Or 

 we may firid the most wonderful details described, which may 

 indeed have existed, but for which the actual evidence is only 

 the fertile imagination of the writer. 



From this it will be apparent that though Palaeontology is 

 Biology and Biology includes Palaeontology, yet as regards- 

 original research a division of labour is in most cases necessary. 

 For though paloeontological investigations are absolutely im- 

 possible without an adequate knowledge of recent zoology, yet 

 the nature of the remains with which the palaeontologist has to 

 deal renders their interpretation a task of so different a character 

 from that allotted to the investigation of the structure and 

 development of recent forms that he will scarcely have time 

 for the successful carrying out of a second line of research. 

 Conversely, the same holds regarding the sphere of work of the 

 recent biologist. 



Now those last remarks of mine may perhaps tend to confirm 

 an idea which I have at least been told is prevalent in the minds 

 of recent biologists, namely, that the results of Paleontology 

 are so uncertain, so doubtful, and so imperfect, that they are 

 scarcely worthy of serious attention being paid to them. And 

 the best answer I can make to such an opinion, if it really does 

 exist, is to try to place before you some evidence that Paleon- 

 tology is not mere fossil shell hunting, or the making up of long 

 lists of names to help the geologists to settle their stratigraphical 

 horizons, but may present us with abundance of matter of 

 genuine biological interest. 



Since the days of Darwin, there is one subject which more 

 than all others engrosses the attention of scientific biologists. 

 I mean the question of Evolution, or the Doctrine of Descent, 

 Time was when controversies raged round the very idea of 

 Evolution, and when men of science were divided among them- 

 selves as to whether the doctrine to which Darwin's theory of 

 Natural Selection gave so mighty an impetus was or was not 

 to be accepted. Times have, however, changed, and I hardly 

 think that we should now find a single true scientific worker who 

 continues to hold on by the old special creation idea. Philo- 

 sophic zoologists now busy themselves either with amassing 

 morphological evidences of Descent or with the discussion of 

 various theories as to the factors by which organic evolution has 

 been brought about — whether Natural Selection has been the all- 

 sufficient cause or not, whether acquired peculiarities are trans- 

 missible, and so on. ^ 



From the nature of things it is clear that the voice of the 

 paleontologist can only be heard on the morphological aspect of 

 the question, but to many of us, including myself, the morpho- 

 logical argument is so convincing that we believe that even if 

 the Darwinian theory were proved to-morrow to be utterly base- 

 less, the Doctrine of Descent would not be in the slightest 

 degree affected, but would continue to have as firm a hold oii 

 our minds as before. 



Now as Paleontology takes us back, far back, into the life of 

 the past, it might be reasonably expected that it would throw great 

 light on the descent of animals, but the amount of its evidence is 

 necessarily much diminished by two unfortunate circumstances. 

 First, the terrible imperfection of the geological record, a fact 

 so obvious to any one having any acquaintance with Geology 

 that it need not be discussed here ; and secondly, the circum- 

 stance that save in very exceptional cases only the hard parts of 

 animals are preserved, and those too often in an extremely 

 fragmentary and disjointed condition. But though we cannot 

 expect that the paleontological record will ever be anything 

 more than fragmentary, yet the constant occurrence of new and 

 important discoveries leads us to entertain the hope that, in course 

 of time, more and more of its pages will become disclosed to us. 



Incomplete, however, as our knowledge of Evolution as 

 derived from Paleontology must be, that is no reason why we 

 should not appraise it at its proper value, and now and again 

 stop for a moment to take stock of the material which has 

 accumulated. 



