lxxx REPORT — 1877. 



burg, well known as the author of a work entitled ' Theoria Generationis,' 

 published in 1759, by which the epigenesis or actual formation of organs 

 in a new being was first demonstrated, and Christian Pander, 'who, by his 

 researches made at Yviirzburg, explained, in a work published in 1817, the 

 principal changes by which the embryo arises and is formed. 



Von Baer was born in the Eussian province of Esthonia on the 29 th of 

 February, 1792. After having been fifteen years Professor in the Prussian 

 University of Konigsberg, he was called to St. Petersburg, and having some 

 years later been appointed to a newly established professorship of Compara- 

 tive Anatomy and Physiology, he remained in that city for nearly thirty years 

 as the most zealous and able promoter of scientific education and research, 

 stimulating and guiding all around him by his unexampled activity, compre- 

 hensive and original views, sound judgment, and cordial cooperation. In 

 1868, at the age of 76, he retired to Dorpat, from the University of which 

 he had received his degree in 1814, and continued still to occupy himself with 

 Avorking and writing in his favourite subjects, as well as interesting himself 

 in every thing connected with educational and scientific progress, to very 

 near the time of his death, which occurred on the 28th of November, 1876, 

 in his 85th year. 



Although Yon Baer's researches, according to the light in which we may 

 now view them, contributed in no small degree to the introduction of the 

 newer views of the morphological relations of organic structure which have 

 culminated in the Theory of Descent, yet he was unwilling to adopt the views 

 of Darwin ; and one of his latest writings, completed in the last year of his 

 life, was in vigorous opposition to that doctrine. 



It would have been most interesting and instructive to trace the history of 

 the progress of discovery in Embryology from the period of Von Baer down 

 to the present time ; but such a history would not be suitable to the purpose 

 of this address ; and I can only venture here, in addition to Rathke, the 

 colleague of Baer in Konigsberg, to select two names out of the long list of 

 distinguished workers in this field during the last forty years, viz. : — Theodor F. 

 W. von Bischoff, of Giessen and Munich, to whom we owe the greatest progress 

 in the knowledge of the development of Mammals, by his several memoirs, 

 appearing from 1842 to 1854; and Robert Bemak, of Berlin, whose researches 

 on the development of Birds and Batrachia, appearing from 1850 to 1855, 

 gave greatly increased exactness and extension to the general study of deve- 

 lopment. 



The germinal element from which, when fertilized, the new animal is 

 derived is contained within the animal ovum or egg — a compact and definite 

 mass of organic matter, in which, notwithstanding great apparent variations, 

 there is maintained throughout all the members of the animal kingdom, 

 excepting the Protozoa, which are destitute of true ova, a greater uniformity 

 in some respects than belongs to the germinal product of plants. 



