July 21, 1892] 



NATURE 



271 



Excursions.— I'n^ committee have prepared a long list 

 of excursions. Among those for Saturday afternoon are 

 geological excursions to North Berwick and Tantallon, 

 and to the Pentland Hills; a botanical excursion to 

 GuUane ; a dredging excursion on the Firth of Forth ; 

 and excursions to such places of interest as the Land of 

 Scott, the Fairfield Shipbuilding Works and Glasgow 

 the Pumpherston Oil Works, Dundee and the Firth of 

 Tay, Stirling, Rosslyn, Dalmeny and the Forth Bridge, 

 Newbattle Abbey, and Dalkeith Palace. 



On Thursday, occasion is taken to visit places of in- 

 terest further afield. St. Andrews, Dunkeld, Scone and 

 Murthly (arboricultural), Croy (archaeological), Dobbs 

 Linn Moffat (geological), Moorfoot Waterworks, Hamil- 

 ton Palace, Urumlanrig, Yarrow, Crieff, the Trossachs, 

 Loch Lomond, the Firth of Clyde, are all brought within 

 the limit of a one-day excursion. 



Many of the more important manufacturing and other 

 works in the city and neighbourhood are to be open to 

 members, who will thus have ample opportunity of 

 becoming acquainted with the trade of the district. Visits 

 to the paper works at Penicuik or Currie, to the printing- 

 ink works at Granton, and to the gunpowder mills at 

 Roslin, will form pleasant short afternoon excursions. The 

 printing offices of Edinburgh are of great interest, and 

 many of them have made arrangements for the reception 

 of visitors. Breweries, distilleries, biscuit factories, and 

 hydraulic engineering works have all their special develop- 

 ments here, and are well worthy of visits. 



Hospitality and Z^^^z«^^.-- Perhaps the greatest 

 difficulty that the local committee has had to face has 

 been the date fixed for the visit of the Association. 

 August is the holiday month in Edinburgh, and under 

 ordinary circumstances the residential parts of the town 

 are during that month entirely in the hands of the police. 

 For many of the citizens, indeed, holidays are possible 

 only in August. It has therefore been matter of con- 

 gratulation to the committee dealing with this part of the 

 work to find that many people intend to remain in town 

 during the meeting of the Association and that they have 

 been informed of a large number of offers of hospitality 

 having been sent to visitors. 



The hotel accommodation in Edinburgh is consider- 

 able, but the strain upon it in August is great. The 

 local committee have secured for members of the 

 Association a considerable number of rooms in hotels, 

 and these are being rapidly allotted on application. 

 Visitors who intend to live in hotels during the meeting 

 will do well to make their arrangements early. 



With regard to lodgings, probably no town is so well 

 off as Edinburgh, and fortunately during August many of 

 the best rooms are vacant. A register of lodgings has 

 been opened at the local offices, and the secretaries are 

 prepared to give assistance to visitors desiring to secure 

 apartments. A provisional list of hotels and lodgings has 

 been prepared and may be had on application. The 

 principal clubs have offered to admit visiting members of 

 the Association as honorary members during the meeting, 

 subject to such conditions as are required by the constitu- 

 tion of the club. 



Publications. — The programme of local arrangements 

 will contain a hotel map of Edinburgh, a large scale map 

 of central Edinburgh, including all the buildings used in 

 connection with the meeting of the Association, and a 

 general map of Edinburgh and Leith, on which all the 

 works open to visitors are specially marked. 



The " Excursions Handbook," published by the com- 

 mittee, gives details of the various transit arrangements 

 and general sketches of the routes to be taken. It also 

 indicates the nature of the interest attached to each 

 excursion. The handbook will be illustrated by a special 

 map of the South of Scotland and by section maps on a 

 larger scale showing details of excursions. 



F. Grant Ogilvie. 



NO. I I 86, VOL. 46] 



THE ORIGIN OF LAND ANIMALS: 

 A BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH.^ 



THIS remarkable and very unequal work, many-sided 

 and heterogeneous, is worthy of careful consider- 

 ation. It is not wanting in imagination, more or less 

 disciplined, and it is loaded with information from the 

 works of contemporary naturalists, now for the first time 

 brought together in a single volume. One great merit it 

 has of regarding plants and animals, not merely as forms 

 of life, but as living forms : the machinery is exhibited to 

 us in motion. 



The title of the work scarcely conveys an adequate idea 

 of its comprehensiveness ; it might just as well have been 

 styled " The Evolution of the Living World [for plants are 

 not excluded from its universal purview], and the way it 

 has been brought about." 



The leading idea appears to be that a change from 

 marine to terrestrial habitat has taken place much earlier 

 in the history of the higher forms of life than is generally 

 supposed, that the land from the early beginnings of 

 geologic time has been peopled both with animals and 

 plants, and has, more than the sea, been the great arena 

 of progressive change. At the outset, the shore, where 

 sea and land and air all meet and commingle, was the 

 birthplace of life, and from it living forms have continually 

 wandered in all directions— to the open ocean and the 

 abyssal depths, to rivers, marshes, and dry land. From 

 the Algae, which are almost the only marine plants, the 

 vegetable kingdom was derived. That this is character- 

 istically terrestrial is due to the fact that vegetable 

 protoplasm is less adaptive than animal. " Plants as 

 land proprietors are the true conservatives ; " hence, once 

 on land always on land. The terrestrial character of 

 plants offers a suggestive hint as to the place of develop- 

 ment of the greater part of the animal kingdom : it also 

 has been on land, but with more numerous offshoots to 

 the sea. In terrestrial plants such as Myxomycetes— 

 " the true Bathybius"— are the roots of the animal world ; 

 or if this claim be not admitted, and to Bacteria be as- 

 signed this place, a terrestrial origin remains uninipugned, 

 since these organisms are predominantly inhabitants of 

 the land. 



The migration of marine animals may be direct, but 

 more usually it is by successive stages, first through fresh 

 water—" the great highway to land-life "—then to damp 

 places, and finally to the dry land itself, which, however, 

 at the time of migration may have been subjected to a 

 damper and warmer climate than at present prevails. 

 With change of medium progressive modification has 

 been associated, for existence in the air makes three 

 great demands on the organism, it must protect itself 

 against being dried up, acquire new modes of respiration, 

 and more substantial organs of support. 



Many animals, ennobled by their response to these 

 demands, have returned to the sea, and exercise dominion 

 over it, undergoing, of course, fresh modifications, par- 

 ticularly of the respiratory organs ; while others have 

 retained possession of the terrestrial domain, adapting 

 themselves to minor changes of habitat and cUmate. Thus 

 far more groups of land-animals are derived from a 

 terrestrial ancestry than we imagine, and the next-of-kin 

 of orders now characteristically marine are less frequently 

 than we suppose to be found in the sea, but must be sought 

 for on the land. The whale and sea-turtle, land crabs 

 and climbing fish, so far from being rare and exceptional 

 cases, are instructive examples of great migratory move- 

 ments and associated anatomical change. 



The hypothesis not only supplies a needed stimulus, 

 powerful enough to account for the evolution of the organic 

 world, but at the same time it explains the futility of our 

 search in marine strata for connecting links between lead- 



I " Die Entstehung der Landtiere : ein Biologischer Versuch." Von Dr. 

 Heinrich Simroth, Privat-docent an der Universit;it, Leipzig. Pp. 492. with 

 254 Illustrations in the Text. (1891.) 



