768 HEPORT— 1900. 



Section D.— ZOOLOGY. 



Peesident of the Section— Eamsat H. Teacitjaie, M.D., LL.D., F.E.S, 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. 

 The President delivered the following Address : — 



In opening to-day the sittings of the Zoological Section, I must first express my 

 sense of the honour which has been conferred on me in having heen chosen as 

 your President on this occasion, and I may add that I feel it not only as an 

 honour to myself personally hut also as a compliment to the field of investigation 

 in which the greater part of my own original work has heen done.- It is a wel- 

 come recognition of the doctrine, which I, and much more important men indeed 

 than T, have always maintained, namely, that Palaeontology, however valuable, 

 nay, indispensable, its bearings on Geology may be, is in its own essence a part of 

 Biology, and that its facts and its teachings must not be overlooked by those who 

 would pursue the study of Organic Morphology on a truly comiirehensive and 

 scientific basis. As I have asked on a previous occasion, ' Does an animal cease 

 to be an animal because it is preserved in stone instead of spirits ? Is a skeleton 

 any the less a skeleton because it has been excavated from the rock, instead of 

 prepared in a macerating trough ? ' And I may now add— Do animals, because 

 they have been extinct for it may be millions of years, thereby give up their place 

 in the great chain of organic being, or do they cease to be of any importance to 

 the evolutionist because their soft tissues, now no longer existing, cannot be 

 imbedded in paraffine and cut with a Cambridge microtome ? 



These are thesss which I think no one denies theoretically ; but what of the 

 practical application of the rule ? For thouarh cordially thanking my biological 

 brethren for the honour they have done me in placing me in this chair to-day, I 

 must ask them not to be offended if I say that in times past I have a few things 

 against some of them at least. I refer first to the apathy concerning palfeonto- 

 logical work, more especially where fishes are concerned, which one frequently 

 meets with in the writings of biologists, as seen in the setting up of classifications 

 and theories and the erection of genealogical trees without any, or with at least 

 inadequate, enquiry as to whether such theories or trees are con'oborated by the 

 record of the rocks. But more vexatious still are the off'hand proceedings of some 

 biologists who, when they wish to complete their generalisations on the structure 

 of a living organism, or group of organisms, by allusion to those which in geological 

 time have gone before, do not take the trouble to consult the original palseonto- 

 logical memoirs or papers, or to make themselves in an}' way practically 

 acquainted with the subject, but derive their knowledsje at second or third hand 

 from some text-book or similar work, which may not in every case be exactly up 

 to date on the matters in question. Nay, more than this, I think I have seen the 

 authors of such text-books or treatises credited with facts and illustrations which 

 were due to the labours of hard-working palaeontologists years before. 



