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ORDINARY MEETING, April 21, 1884. 

 H. Cadman Jones, Esq., M.A.^ in the Chaik. 



The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed, and the fol- 

 lowing Elections were announced : — 



Members :— T. C. Edwards, Esq., Yorkshire ; C. J. Lacy, Esq., London. 



Also the presentation of the following work for the Library : — 

 " The Isle of Wight." By Captain J. Brown. From the Same. 



The following paper was then read by the Author : — 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE PEARLY NAUTILUS. 

 By S. R. Pattison, F.G.S. 



IT is a bold, perhaps a rash thing, to question a biological 

 conclusion publicly expressed by the present distinguished 

 President of the Royal vSociety. But no one would be more 

 ready than he to encourage the pursuit of truth, and in 

 the interest of the latter I offer the following remarks on 

 the subject of evolution, in opposition to statements and 

 inductions expressed by Professor Huxley in the Rede Lecture 

 delivered at Cambridge in the month of June last, and reported 

 in Nature of June 21, 1883. 



The President defines the term evolution to mean " that 

 the different forms of animal life had not arisen independently 

 of each other in the great sweep of past time, but that the one 

 had proceeded from the other ; and that that which had 

 happened in the course of past ages had been analogous to 

 that which takes place daily and hourly in the case of the 

 individual ; that is to say, that just as at the present day, in 

 the course of individual development, the lower and simple 

 forms, in virtue of the properties which were inherent in 

 them, passed step by step by the establishment of small 

 successive differences into the higher and more complicated 

 forms, so in the case of past ages, that which constituted the 

 stock of the whole ancestry had advanced grade by grade, in 



