522 
could be seen during a three weeks’ residence in the United 
States, to note how they economise time there, how a person 
could be transferred from place to place, the freedom with which 
one is allowed to see the great internal organisation—if they did 
that they would be repaid one-hundredfold. He did not know 
of anything that had occurred to himself personally which had 
affected him so much as a short visit which he had the honour 
of paying to America. Both in the universities and in applied 
industries it was a revelation to him, and he was sure it would 
be a personal gratification to every member of that Association, 
and an entirely new revelation to them, if they took advantage 
of the invitation offered. He hoped some of the officials of 
the British Association would be present on the great occasion 
in Washington. 
In bringing the meeting to a close, Prof. Dewar 
referred to the work of Joseph Black, Thomas Andrews, 
James Thomson, Lord Kelvin and Prof. Tait, who were 
connected with Belfast and had given it a leading place 
in scientific history. 
SECTION D. 
ZOOLOGY. 
OPENING ADDRESS BY PrRor. G. B. Howgs, D.Sc., LL.D., 
F.R.S., PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION, 
The Morphological Method and Progress. 
Ir is now twenty-eight years since this Association last 
assembled in Belfast, and to those present who can recall the 
meeting the proceedings of Section D will be best remembered 
for the delivery of an address by Huxley ‘‘On the Hypothesis 
that Animals are Automata, and its History,” one of the finest 
philosophic products of his mind. At that date the zoological 
world was about to embark on a period of marked activity. 
Fired by the influence of the ‘‘ Origin of Species,’ which had 
survived abuse and was taking immediate effect, the zoological 
mind, accepting the doctrine of evolution, had become eager to 
determine the lines of descent of animal forms. Marine observa- 
tories were in their infancy ; the Challenger was still at sea ; the 
study of comparative embryology was but then becoming a 
science ; and when, reflecting on this, we briefly survey the 
present field, we can but stand astonished at the enormity of the 
task which has been achieved. 
Development has proceeded on every hand. The leavening 
influence, spreading with sure effect, has in due course extended 
to the Antipodes and the East, in each of which portions of the 
globe there has now arisen a band of earnest workers pledged 
to the investigation of their indigenous fauna, with which they 
are proceeding with might and main. Of the Japanese, let it 
be said that not only have they filled in gaps in our growing 
knowledge, for which they alone have the materials at hand, but 
that, with an acumen deserving the highest praise, they have put 
us right on first principles. I refer to the fact that they have 
shown, with respect to the embryonic membranes of the common 
chick, that we in the West, with our historic associations, our 
methods and our skill, contenting ourselves with an ever-recur- 
ring restriction to the germinal area, have, by an error of 
orientation, missed an all-important septum, displaced under an 
inequality of growth. 
Those of us who have lived and worked throughout this 
memorable period have had a unique experience, for never has 
there been progress so rapid, accumulation of observations so 
extensive and exact. Of the 386,000 living animal species, to 
compute the estimate low, every one available has been lain 
under hand, with the result that our annual literary output now 
amounts to close upon 10,000 contributions, the description of 
new genera and subgenera, say 1700. More than one-half of 
this vast series refers to the Insecta alone ; but notwithstanding 
this, the records of facts of structure and development, with 
which most of us are concerned, now amount to a formidable 
mass, calculated to awe the unlettered looker-on, to overwhelm 
the earnest devotee, unless by specialising he can secure relief. 
As an example of what may occur, it may be remarked that a 
recent exploration of the great African lakes has resulted in the 
discovery of over 130 new species. 
As to the nature of this unprecedented progress, it will suffice 
to consider the Earthworms. In 1874 few were known to us. 
An advance in our knowledge, which had then commenced, had 
made known but few more which seemed likely to yield result. 
Darwin’s book upon them had not appeared. Some were exotic, 
it is true, but no one suspected that a group so restricted in their 
NO, 1717, VOL. 66] 
NATURE 
[SEPTEMBER 25, 1902 
habits could reveal aught beyond a dull monotony of form and 
structure. Never was surmise more wide of the mark, for the 
combined investigations of a score of earnest workers in all parts 
of the world have in the interval recorded some 700 odd species 
of about 140 genera. Mainly exotic, they exhibit among them- 
selves a structural variation of the widest possible range. Nut 
only do we recognise littoral and branchiate forms, but others 
acheetous and leech-like in habit, to the extent of the discovery 
of a morphological overlap with the leeches, under which we are 
now compelled to remove them from their old association with 
the flat worms, and to unite them with the earthworms, And 
we even find these animals, as represented by the Acantho- 
drilidaee, coming prominently into considerations which involve 
the theory of a former Antarctic comtinent, one of the most 
revolutionary zoo-geographical topics of our time. 
This case of the earthworm may be taken as typical of the 
rest, since for each and every class and order of animal forms, 
the progress of the period through which we have passed since 
last we assembled here has produced revolutionary results. Our 
knowledge of facts has become materially enhanced ; our classi- 
fications, at best but the working expression of our ideas, have 
been to a large extent replaced in clearer, more comprehensive 
schemes ; and we are to-day enabled to deduce, with an accuracy 
proportionate to our increased knowledge of fact, the nature 
of the interrelationships of the living forms which with ourselves 
inhabit the earth. 
» Satisfactory as is this result, it must be clearly borne in mind 
that its realisation could not have come about but for a know- 
ledge of the animals of the past; and turning now to palzon- 
tology, it may be said that at the time of our last meeting in this 
city the scientific world was just becoming entranced by the 
promise of unexpected results in the exploration of the American 
Tertiary beds, then being first opened up. The Rocky Mountain 
district was the area under investigation, and with this, as with 
the progress in our knowledge of recent forms, no one living was 
prepared for the discoveries which shortly came to pass. To 
consider a concrete case, we may premise that study of the 
placental mammals had justified the conclusion that theirancestors 
must have had equal and pentadactyle limbs, a complete ulna 
and fibula, a complete clavicle, and a skull with forty-four teeth ; 
must have realised, that is, the predominant term of the living 
Insectivora as generally understood. Who among the zoologists 
of our time does not recall with enthusiasm the revelation which 
arose from the discovery, during these early days, in the Eocene 
of Central North America, of the genera at first described as 
Eo- and Helohyus? The evidence of the existence, in the ¥ 
locality named, of these forty-four toothed peccaries, as they 4 
were held to be, rendered clearer the records of the later Tertiary 
deposits of the old world, which were those of hogs, and, in 
correlation with the facts then known, suggested that the Rocky 
Mountain area was the home of the ancestral porcine stock, and 
that in Early Tertiary times their descendants must have migrated, 
on the one hand, across the northern belt, of which the Aleutian 
Islands now mark the course, into the old world, to beget, by 
complication of their teeth, the pigs and hogs ; and on the other 
into Central South America, to give rise, by numerical reduction 
of teeth and toes, to the peccaries, still extant. 
Migration in opposite directions with diversity of modification 
was the refrain of this remarkable find, far-reaching in its morpho- 
logical and zoo-geographical effects. Nor can we allude with 
less fervour to the still more striking case of the horses, which 
proved not merely a similar, though perhaps a later, migration, 
but a parallelism of modification in both the old and new worlds, 
culminating in the latter in extinction, whereby it became neces- 
sary, on the advent of civilised man, to carry back the old-world 
horse to its ancestral American home. No wonder that this should 
have provoked our Huxley to the remark that in it we have the 
‘*demonstrative evidence of the occurrence of evolution,” and 
that the facts of paleontology came to be regarded as certainly 
not second to those of the fascinating but seductive department 
of embryology, at the time making giant strides. 
I have endeavoured thus to picture that state of zoological 
science at the time of our last meeting here ; and I wish now to 
confine myself to some of the broader results since achieved on 
the morphological side. But let us first digress, in order to be 
clear as to the meaning of this phrase. 
We do not expect the public to be accurate in their usage of 
scientific terms; but it is to me an astounding fact that among 
trained scientific experts, devotees to branches of science other 
than our own, there exists a gross misunderstanding as to the 
