PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. Ixxi. 



animals, unknown in the Palaeozoic' age, appear in numerous 

 species, in the early Mesozoic, and culminate in hundreds of 

 species, disappearing completely at' its close, and leaving no 

 successors- The Nautilus, one of the oldest and least improved 

 of the order, however, survived and still testifies to the wonderful 

 contrivances with which the genus is endowed. The Cuttle-fish 

 and Squids stand the highest in the group of Cephalopods. 

 Owing to the absence of external shells they are little known in 

 a fossil state. They appear abundantly in the Mesozoic, where 

 they are represented principally by the Belemnites, which 

 became extinct at the end of the Mesozoic. 



In leaving the Molluscan type I may add that although there is 

 an individual resemblance to the corresponding organs of the 

 lower Vertebrata, there is an absence of any general approxima- 

 tion. Although we find the arrangement of the cephalic ganglia, 

 the centres of the organs of sense, approaching the lower 

 forms of the brain in Fishes, and the instruments of sight, 

 hearing, smell, and taste, have a similar approximation to those of 

 Vertebrates, yet no such resemblance exists between the ganglia 

 connected with the locomotive apparatus of Cephalopods and the 

 spinal cord of even the lowest Vertebrata. The muscles, which 

 move the various parts of the body and arms, have no fixed points 

 of attachment and no levers to act upon, as with the Vertebrata, 

 neither is there a trace of a series of ganglionic centres which 

 forms the gangliated cord in the higher developed Articulata, 

 or the spinal cord of the Vertebrata. On the whole it may be 

 said that the group of Cephalopoda presents as close an 

 approximation to the Vertebrate sub -kingdom as it could well do, 

 without a departure from the general Molluscan type. 



My Address will be incomplete if I do not notice General Pitt 

 Rivers' fourth volume of his magnificent illustrated series of his 

 Excavations in Cranborne Chase, near Rushmore, including his 

 address to the members of the Archaeological Institute of Great 

 Britain and Ireland at Dorchester in 1898. The Volume gives a 

 description of his Excavations at the South Lodge Camp, Rush- 

 more Park, at Handley Hill Entrenchment, the Stone and- Bronze 



