248 Address of the President of the British Association. 



no more doubt than I have of my own existence, that some of the lower 

 animals feel severe pain : and even if the words of our immortal Shaks- 

 peare as to the corporal sufferance of the beetle trod upon be not liter- 

 erally accurate — yet who is entitled to affirm the contrary ? — this, I 

 think, is clear, that the child who is indulged in mutilating or killing 

 an insect for his own pleasure, has learnt the first lesson of inhumanity 

 to his own species. 



44 To revert, however, for a minute, to the principle on which true re- 

 sults may be obtained from the observed variations of organs in the 

 animal series, it is in the first place essential (I speak on the authority 

 of Professor Owen, and, of course, not on my own) to determine the 

 parts which truly answer to those, the functions of which it is the object 

 of the comparative anatomist to elucidate. An elaborate and valuable 

 contribution with this aim, was communicated by Dr. Carpenter to the 



Physiological Section of this Association, at its meeting at Southamp- 



ton ; having for its subject the homologies and functions of the parts 

 of the encephalon. 



44 It is needless to dwell on the obvious necessity of the knowledge of 

 the essential nature, — signified by the true definition and name — of the 

 part of the animal series, in order to insure correct reasoning on the 

 physiological import of the varieties of such parts. The British Asso- 

 ciation has already manifested its appreciation of the value and neces- 

 sity of this preliminary step in comparative physiology, by calling for 

 the report on the homologies of the vertebrate skeleton ; and that re- 

 port, just published, is itself the best evidence of the importance of the 

 subject, and a model of the mode in which it should be treated, and in 

 which, happily for this Association, it has been treated by the Cuvier 

 of England, Professor Owen. 



u In no department of the science of organized bodies has the pro- 

 gress been greater or more assured, than in that which relates to the 

 microscopic structure of the constituent tissues of animal bodies, both 

 in their healthy and in their morbid states ; and this progress is spe- 

 cially marked in this country during the period which has elapsed 

 since the communication to the British Association by Professor Owen, 

 of his researches into the intimate structure of recent and fossil teeth. 

 " The result of these researches having demonstrated the constancy of 

 well-defined and clearly appreciable characters in the dental tissues ot 

 each species of animal, (by which characters such species could be 

 determined, in many instances, by the examination of a fragment of a 

 tooth,) other observers have been stimulated to pursue the same minute 

 inquiries into the diversities of structure of the tissues of other organs. 

 Such inquiries, for example, have been most ably and successfully P ur * 

 sued by Dr. Carpenter in reference to the microscopic structure of re- 

 cent and fossil shells; and the anatomist, the naturalist, and the pale- 

 ontologist, are alike indebted to the zeal and the skill of that eminen 

 physiologist: while, in another sense, all are indebted to the Britis^ 

 Association for aiding and stimulating his inquiries, and for the il' uS " 

 trations with which the publication of Dr. Carpenter's Report has been 

 accompanied in the transactions of the Association. 



; "The hairs of the different mammalian animals offer to the microsco- 

 pical anatomist a field of observation as richly and remarkably devei- 



