^6 FOURTH GENERAL MEETING. 



FOURTH GENERAL MEETING. 



Friday, August 26th, at 10.30 a.m. 



Chairman: The President. 



The Secretary read the following telegram from H.R.H. The 

 Prince of Wales, Patron of the Fourth ^Meeting of the Con- 

 gress : " Delighted to hear from you that Zoological Congress is 

 such a success. ALBERT Edward. " 



The Secretary further announced that, in consequence of the 

 small number of applicants, the proposed dredging expedition to 

 Port Erin was abandoned, but Prof. Herdman cordially invited 

 visitors next Easter. 



Prof Haeckel read a paper in English on " Our Present 

 Knowledge of the Descent of Man," of which the following is an 

 abstract : 



Our present knowledge of the Descent of Man is immensely 

 improved by the great progress in Palaeontology, in Comparative 

 Anatomy and Phylogeny during the last twenty years. The nioiiopJiy- 

 letic origin of all Mammalia from the Monotremata upwards to Man 

 is at present no more a vague hypothesis, but a positively established 

 fact. All the living and extinct Mammalia, which we know, are 

 descended from one single common ancestral form, which lived in 

 the Triassic or Permian period, and this form must be derived from 

 some Permian or perhaps Carboniferous Reptile (allied to Progono- 

 sauria and Theriodontia) as well as the latter from a Carboniferous 

 Amphibian (Stegocephalia). These latter descend from Devonian 

 fishes and these again from lower Vertebrates. Much more difficult 

 is the question of the origin of the great Vertebrate-Stem, and 

 its descent from Invertebrates. But these questions are not so 

 important as the fixed fact that Man is a m.ember of tJie Primate- 

 Order (Linne) and that all Primates (i.e. all Lemurs, all Monkeys, 

 and all Man) descend from one common stem (Huxley). Zoolog)' 

 may be proud to have proved this fact, based on the theories of 

 Lamarck (1809) and of Darwin (1859). The immense progress of 



