president's address. 19 



as well ;is in caverns, on uiouutaiu tops, and ia great lakes and ii\ers. 

 We have learnt much that is new as to distribution ; countless new forms 

 have been discovered, and careful anatomical and microscopical study 

 conducted on specimens sent home to our laboratories. I cannot refrain 

 from calling to mind the discovery of the eggs of the Australian duck- 

 mole and hedgehog ; the fresh-water jelly-fish of Regent's Park, the 

 African lakes, and the Delaware River ; the marsupial mole of Central 

 Australia ; the okapi ; the young and adult of the mud- fishes of Australia, 

 Africa, and South America ; the fishes of the Nile and Congo ; the gill- 

 l)earing earth worms and mud-worms ; the various forms of the caterpillar- 

 like Peripatus ; strange deep-sea fishes, polyps and sponges. 



The main result of a good deal of such investigation is measured by 

 our increased knowledge of the pedigree of organisms, what used to be 

 called ' classification.' The anatomical study by the Australian professors. 

 Hill and Wilson, of the teeth and the fcatus of the Australian group of 

 pouched mammals — the marsupials — has entirely upset previous notions, 

 to the effect that these were a primitive group, and has shown that their 

 possession of only one replacing tooth is a retention of one out of many 

 such teeth (the germs of which are present), as in placental mammals ; and 

 further that many of these marsupials have the nourishing outgrowth of 

 the foetus called the placenta fairly well developed, so that they must be 

 regarded as a degenerate side-branch of the placental mammals, and not 

 as primitive forerunners of that dominant series. 



Speculations as to the ancestral connection of the great group of 

 vertebrates with other great groups have been varied and ingenious ; but 

 most naturalists are now inclined to the view that it is a mistake to 

 assume any such connection in the case of vertebrates of a more definite 

 character than we admit in the case of starfishes, shell-fish, and insects. 

 All these groups are ultimately connected by very simple, remote, and 

 not by proximate ancestors, with one another and with the ancestors of 

 vertebrates. 



The origin of the limbs of vertebrates is now generally agreed to be 

 correctly indicated in the Thatcher-Mivart-Balfour theory to the effect 

 that they are derived from a pair of continuous lateral tins, in fish-like 

 ancestors, similar in every way to the continuous median dorsal fin of 

 fishes. 



The discovery of the formation of true spermatozoa by simple unicellular 

 animals of the group Protozoa is a startling thing, for it had always been 

 supposed that these peculiar reproductive elements were only formed by 

 multicellular organisms. They have been discovered in some of the 

 gregarina-like animalcules, the Coccidia, and also in the blood-parasites. 



Among plants one of the most important discoveries relates to these 

 same reproductive elements, the spermatozoa, which by botanists are called 

 antherozoids. A great diffierence between the whole higher series of 

 plants, the flowering plants or phanerogams, and the cryptogams or lower 

 plants, including ferns, mosses, and algte, was held to be that the latter 



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