ORDINARY MEETING.* 

 Professor E. Hull, LL.D., F.R.S., in the Chair. 



The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed. 

 The following paper was read by the Author : — 



PLAN AND PURPOSE IN NATURE. By Walter 

 KiDD, M.D., F.Z.S. 



THE existence of Design in Nature is the ''^ quod semper, 

 quod ubiqiie, quod ah omnibus," which scientific teachers 

 may as well make up their minds to entertain. It is their 

 province to ascertain, if they can, the modes in which this 

 Design has been carried out. At the same time it must be 

 acknowledged that the conception of purpose and plan 

 immanent in and pervading Nature, is the insurmountable 

 barrier to the reception of the doctrine of evolution, as 

 "rightly conceived" by Mr. Herbert Spencer. Darwin's 

 discoveries, which at first logically involved some sort of 

 teleology, by reason of his supposed four or five primordial 

 forms of life, are supposed to have given the coup de grace 

 to the old teleology. All the structures and parts of plants 

 and animals are supposed to exist only by reason of their 

 value in the struggle for existence to their possessors, or as 

 survivals of some that were of use to remote ancestors, and 

 myriad adaptations of means to ends throughout nature are 

 attributed to a mechanical law. At this amazing position 



* Feb. 21st, 1898. 



