400 



NA TURE 



[August i6, 1906 



hypothesis. In any case, it is not likely that many British 

 geologists will be found willing to regard the hill peats 

 as other than post-glacial. 



Summary. 



My subject has proved unwieldy ; and in merely sketch- 

 ing its outlines I am uneasily aware that I have over- 

 stepped the usual bounds of an Address. My conclusions 

 — if the term be applicable to results mainly negative — are 

 as follows : — 



(i) In the present state of opinion regarding the glacial 

 sequence and its interpretation in North Europe, it is 

 premature to attempt the arrangement of the British drifts 

 on this basis. 



(2) No proof of mild interglacial epochs, or even of one 

 such epoch, was discovered during the examination of 

 certain typically glaciated districts in England, Ireland, 

 and the Isle of Man ; and the drifts in these areas yielded 

 evidence that from the onset of the land ice to its final 

 disappearance there was a period of continuous glaciation, 

 during which the former sea-basins were never emptied of 

 their ice-sheets. 



(3) The " middle glacial " sands and gravels of our 

 islands afford no proof of mild interglacial conditions or 

 of submergence. In most cases, if not in all, they repre- 

 sent the fluvio-glacial material derived from the ice-sheets. 



(4) The British evidence for the Interglacial hypothesis, 

 though requiring further consideration in some districts, 

 is nowhere satisfactory. Most of the fossiliferous beds re- 

 garded as interglacial contain a fauna and flora compatible 

 with cold conditions of climate ; and in the exceptional 

 cases where a warmer climate is indicated, the relation of 

 the deposits to the boulder-clays is open to question. 



(5) The British Pliocene and Pleistocene deposits appear 

 to indicate a progressive change from temperate to sub- 

 arctic conditions, which culminated in the production of 

 great ice-sheets, and then slowly recovered. 



(6) During the long period of glaciation the margins 

 of the ice-lobes underwent extensive oscillations, but there 

 is evidence that the different lobes reached their culmin- 

 ation at different times, and not simultaneously. The 

 alternate waxing and waning of the individual ice-sheets 

 may have been due to meteorological causes of local, and 

 not of general Influence. 



Let me add, in closing, that it would have been a more 

 gratifying task if, instead of probing into these outstand- 

 ing uncertainties, I had chosen to deal only with the 

 many and great advances that have been made during the 

 last twenty-five years in the domain of British glacial 

 geology. With these advances we have, indeed, reason to 

 be well satisfied. But (he necessity for further knowledge 

 is insistent ; and it is useless to set about the solution of 

 our intricate problem until we have all the factors at com- 

 mand. Even then — " Gr.ant we have mastered learning's 

 crabbed text. Still there's the comment " — and, as I have 

 tried to show, the comment may raise more difficulties 

 than the text itself. 



SECTION D. 



ZOOLOGY. 



Opening Address by J. J. Lister, M..'\. 

 President of the Section. 



F.R.S. 



The Life-History of the Foramtiiifera. 

 In the year 1881 the British Association, having completed 

 the fiftieth year of its existence, met again in the citv of 

 York, where its first meeting had been held. By way of 

 marking the completion of its first half-century, and also 

 to do honour to the city which had welcomed its initiatory 

 gathering, it was arranged that the president of each 

 section of the Association should be selected from among 

 the past ■ presidents of the whole. At that time botanists 

 and zoologists were not so far specialised into distinct 

 groups as, for better or worse, they have since become, 

 and were still, at any rate. for the purposes of the British 

 .Association meetings, able to share their deliberations. 

 Section D included, besides that of zoologv and botany, 

 the departments of anthropology and of anatomy and 

 NO. IQ20, VOL. 74] 



physiology, though the two latter had each its own vice- 

 president. 



The naturalist who was selected to preside in 1881 over 

 the whole section was the veteran zoologist. Sir Richard 

 Owen. By that time all or nearly all the 434 scientific 

 memoirs which stand to his name in the Royal Society's 

 Catalogue had been written. Those dealing with com- 

 parative anatomy and palaeontology, and they are by far 

 the greater part, constitute, to quote the words of Hiixley, 

 " a splendid record ; enough and more than enough to 

 justify the high place in the scientific world which Owen 

 so long occupied. If I mistake not, the historian of com- 

 parative anatomy and of palajontology will always assign 

 to Owen a place next to and hardly lower than that of 

 Cuvier, who was practically the creator of those sciences 

 in their modern shape." But Owen's presidential address 

 dealt not with the anatomy or relationships of living or 

 extinct animals, nor with any of those views on " trans- 

 cendental anatomy " which have met with less acceptance. 

 The subject selected was the great Natural History Museum 

 at South Kensington, to the planning and establishment 

 of which the energy of his later years was largely directed. 



In considering the previous occupants of the chair which 

 I have the honour to hold at this seventy-sixth meeting, 

 I cannot refrain from expressing my sense of the loss 

 which not only his friends, but zoology at large, have 

 sustained in the death, last Easter, of Prof. Weldon, the 

 Linacre Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Oxford. 



Trained in the pathways of morphology under Balfour 

 at Cambridge, Weldon 's energies were, in the later years 

 of his life, devoted to the endeavour to obtain determin- 

 ations, by means of exact measurements, of the degree of 

 variation from the normal type to which given populations 

 are subject, and, so doing, to find an approximately exact 

 measure of the action of natural selection. 



This enterprise and the methods to be employed formed 

 the subject of his address to this Section in 1898, at 

 Bristol : and in 1901, assisted by the high mathematical 

 ability of Prof. Karl Pearson, and in consultation with Mr. 

 Francis Galton, he issued the first number of Biomctrika : 

 a Journal for the Statistical Study of Biological Problems. 



It can hardly be doubted that these and similar methods, 

 if properly applied, will render important service in the 

 elucidation of the problems in w^hich we are all, botanists 

 and zoologists alike, interested ; though I may confess, for 

 my own part, that those who prophesy from the biometric 

 side of the church use a tongue which is to me unfamiliar, 

 and that, to my loss, I often go away unedified. 



It may appear presumptuous in one who thus confesses 

 his inability to grapple with the mathematical intricacies 

 involved in the application of this method if he attempts 

 to offer anything in the nature of advice to those who use 

 it. Nevertheless I do venture — it may be in the " insolence 

 of office " — to urge that the old adage should be borne in 

 mind recommending that before beginning culinary oper- 

 ations it is advisable first to catch your hare — in other 

 words, to make sure that the problem you seek to elucidate 

 is sound from the standpoint of biology before bringing 

 a formidable mathematical apparatus into action for its 

 investigation. 



Apart, however, from any misgivings on the propriety 

 of the occasions on which this weapon has been used, 

 there can be no question that, properly applied, the bio- 

 metric method is a potent addition to the biological 

 armoury, and in the victories that it achieves Weldon will 

 be remembered as the leader of those who foresaw its 

 usefulness and forged it. 



Not the least memorable of the lessons he has left us 

 is the eager and strenuous manner in which he did the 

 work, in many fields of activity, which his hand found to 

 do. .And while we thus deplore his loss on our own 

 account, as biologists and as friends, our respectful 

 sympathy goes out, I am sure, towards the home where 

 his endeavours found such skilled and devoted assistance. 



Two reports of the Evolution Committee of the Royal 

 Society have been published since Mr. Bateson's presi- 

 dential address on Mendelism, or, as we are now to say. 

 Genetics, two years ago. The coincidence of our meeting 

 with that of the Hybridisation Conference in London, 

 together, as I understand, with the fall of the pea-harvest. 



