PREFACE. 



THE Twenty-Seventh Volume of the Journal of the Transac- 

 tions of the Victoria Institute is now issued. It is a 

 record of tho various important questions taken up in 

 papers by competent authors, carefully investigated, and 

 impartially discussed at Meetings by those who have 

 studied the subjects considered ; to whose opinions have 

 been added the statements of others whom distance has 

 prevented attending the Institute's gatherings in person. 

 The papers and discussions in this volume are upon the 

 following subjects : — " The work of the Institute in the 

 present day," by the Right Hon. Lord Halsbury, P.O., 

 F.R.S., Vice-President; remarks by Sir Henry Barkly, 

 G.C.M.G., K.C.B., F.R.S., Sir F. Young, K.C.M.G., Sir J. 

 Fayrer, M.D., K.C.S.I., F.R.S., Sir G. Buchanan, F.R.S., 

 Professor E. Hull, LL.D., F.R.S., and others, are appended. 

 " The principles of rank among animals," by Professor 

 Henry Webster Parker, M.D., &c., of the United States, 

 in writing on which he, as an anatomist, briefly points out 

 certain arguments for considering that man is " the only 

 primate." A brief note " On the recession of Niagara 

 Falls," by Mr. Warren Upham, Assistant State Geologist. 

 "How the waters of the ocean became salt," by Professor E. 

 Hull, LL.D., F.R.S. ; a letter frum Professor Tyndall, F.R.S., 



