852 REPORT— 1890. 
life. Complications, distortions, innumerable and bewildering, confront us at 
every step, and the progress of knowledge has so far served rather to increase the 
number and magnitude of these pitfalls than to teach us how to avoid them. 
Still, there is no cause for despair—far from it ; if our difficulties are increasing, 
so also are our means of grappling with them; if the goal appears harder to reach 
than we thought for, on the other hand its position is far better defined, and the 
means of approach, the lines of attack, are more clearly recognised. 
One thing above all is apparent, that embryologists must not work single- 
handed, and must not be satisfied with an acquaintance, however exact, with 
animals from the side of development only ; for embryos have this in common with 
maps, that too close and too exclusive a study of them is apt to disturb a man’s 
reasoning power. 
Embryology is a means, not an end. Our ambition is to explain in what 
manner and by what stages the present structure of animals has been attained. 
Towards this embryology affords most potent aid ; but the eloquent protest of the 
great anatomist of Heidelberg must be laid to heart, and it must not be forgotten 
that it is through comparative anatomy that its power to help is derived. 
What would it profit us, as Gegenbaur justly asks, to know that the higher 
vertebrates when embryos have slits in their throats, unless through comparative 
anatomy we were acquainted with forms now existing in which these slits are 
structures essential to existence ? Anatomy defines the goal, tells us of the things 
that have to be explained ; embryology offers a means, otherwise denied to us, of 
attaining it. 
Comparative anatomy and paleontology must be studied most earnestly 
by those who would turn the lessons of embryology to best account, and it must 
never be forgotten that it is to men like Johannes Miiller, Stannius, Cuvier, and 
John Hunter, the men to whom our exact knowledge of comparative anatomy is 
due, that we owe also the possibility of a science of embryology. 
The following Paper and Reports were read :— 
1. On the Ornithology of the Sandwich Islands. 
By Professor A. Newron, F.R.S. 
2. Report of the Committee io Improve and Experiment with a Deev-Sea 
Tow-Net. See Reports, p. 471. 
3. Report of the Committee on the Naples Zoological Station. 
See Reports, p. 449. 
4, Third Report of the Commvittee on the Flora and Fauna of the West 
India Islands.—See Reports, p. 447. 
5. Third Report of the Committee on the Disappearance of Native Plants 
Jrom their Local Habitats.—See Reports, p. 465. 
6, Fourth Report of the Committee for establishing a Botanical Station 
at Paradeniya, Ceylon.i—See Reports, p. 470. 
7. Report of the Committee on the Migration of Birds. 
See Reports, p. 464. 
