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THIRD SERIES. 
Vot. IX.] AUGUST, 1885. [No. 104. 
RECENT ADVANCES IN ZOOLOGY; 
WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE ORIGIN OF THE VERTEBRATA. 
By Pror. F. Jerrrey Beir, M.A., Sec. R.M.S.* 
WueEn I undertook to deliver a lecture with the title of 
“ Recent Advances in Zoology,” I hardly estimated how much 
of what is already well known would have to be told you, if you 
were to understand the value of our later progress. For this 
reason I shall have to confine myself to that group to which we 
belong ourselves, and which is, consequently, that which most 
powerfully interests us all. What I shall now deal with seem to 
be real advances, not forced or feigned marches, but deliberate 
attacks on what is unknown. ‘These advances seem to be real, 
these attacks seem to be deliberate, because they are the result of 
guiding and directing philosophical principles. 
A quarter of a century ago it would have been impossible to 
premise a lecture with a title such as that which has been chosen, 
with remarks such as those I have just made. Advances in 
knowledge there were; accumulations of facts were then over- 
whelming. But there was no co-ordination, there was no general 
leading, there were no forces animating men’s minds to work 
together towards one great end. 
Now, however, there is co-ordination, the spirit if not the 
person of the general is with us still, and well-ordered speculation 
has taken the place of scholastic generalities. 
* A lecture delivered at the Zoological Society’s Gardens in the course 
of “ Davis Lectures,” 2nd July, 1885. 
ZOOLOGIST.—AUGUST, 1885. Z 
