Preside at' s Address. 109 



quote, as still true of the business at our meetings, the 

 words of Dr T. Stre thill Wright, in his remarkable opening 

 address, to which I have already referred. Dr Wright says: 

 "We are men of work, not of talk. We have given forth 

 no voice on the grand hypothetical questions which are now 

 troublino' the Commonwealth of Natural Science. We have 

 been singularly apathetic as to whether or no the stock of 

 our first parent struggled upwards through innumerable 

 adversities, from a monad to a man. I fear, indeed, that we 

 are a prejudiced people, and would rather leave the question 

 as we found it settled many a year ago at our mother's 

 knee." 



Since the day when these wise words were spoken there 

 has, however, been a wonderful development of these theories 

 and hypotheses to which Dr Wright referred. Works, filled 

 with much curious and valuable information, but associated, 

 at the same time, with some of the most startling hypotheses, 

 have been published from time to time in England, and have 

 gone through many editions. I allude, of course, specially 

 to works on the principles of biology, as it is called, and on 

 such subjects as the Origin of Species, the Descent of Man, 

 the Variations of Plants and Animals under domestication, 

 Man's place in Kature, etc., etc. Some of these works have 

 been hailed by gTeat naturalists as introducing a new era 

 of progress and expanded thought, in connection with the 

 investigation of the history of the vegetable and animal 

 kingdoms. Indeed, of late years we have had all these new 

 views and principles propounded by some of their most 

 distinguished supporters, who have occasionally occupied 

 academic chairs; so that they have in this way been very 

 forcibly brought to our very doors. I therefore feel some- 

 what constrained to take at least a passing notice of them 

 now ; to try and see to what they are endeavouring to lead 

 us, as the natural result and outcome of all their teaching, 

 which, I regret to say, seems to me to be something very 

 different indeed from what, in our younger days, we would 

 have thought likely to have met with any favour, at least 

 in Scotland. I have no need, however, now to attempt 

 to show where these theories lead, for they have been more 



