972 REPORT—1896. 
present day or in the record of the rocks, except one or two aberrant, doubtful 
forms, and the group of Tunicates and Amphioxus, both of which are to be looked 
upon as degenerate vertebrates, and indeed are more nearly allied to the Ammo- 
ccetes than to any other animal. This hypothetical group does not attempt to 
explain any of the peculiarities of the central nervous system of vertebrates; its 
advocates, in the words of Lankester, regard the tubular condition of the central 
nervous system as in its origin a purely developmental feature, possessing no 
phylogenetic importance. Strange power of mimicry in nature, that a tube so 
formed should mimic, in its terminations, in its swellings, in the whole of its topo- 
graphical relations to the nervous masses surrounding it, the alimentary canal of 
the other great group of segmented animals so closely as to enable me to put before 
you so large a number of coincidences. 
Just imagine to yourselves what we are required to believe! We are to 
suppose that two groups of animals have diverged from a common stock some- 
where in the region of the Ccelenterata, that each group has become segmented and 
elongated, but that throughout their evolution the one group has possessed a 
ventral mouth, with a ventral nervous system end a dorsal gut, while in the 
other—the hypothetical group—the mouth and gut have throughout been ventral 
and the nervous system dorsal. Then we are further to suppose that, without 
being able to trace the steps of the process, the central nervous system in the final 
members of this hypothetical group has taken on a tubular form of so striking a 
character that every part of this dorsal nerye-tube can be compared to the dorsal 
alimentary tube of the other great group of segmented animals. The plain, 
straightforward interpretation of the facts is what I have put before you, and 
those who oppose this interpretation and hold to the inviolability of the alimentary 
canal are, it seems to me, bound to give asatisfactory explanation of the vertebrate 
nervous system and pineal eye. The time is coming, and indeed has come, when 
the fetish-worship of the hypoblast will give way to the acknowledgment that the 
soul of every individual is to be found in the brain, and not in the stomach, and 
that the true principle of evolution, without which no upward progress is possible, 
consists in the steady upward development of the central nervous system. 
In conclusion, I would like to quote a portion of the last letter which I ever 
received from Professor Huxley ; his words, in reference to this very subject, were 
as follows: ‘Go on and prosper, there is nothing in the world of science half so 
good as an earthquake hypothesis, if it only serve to show the firmness of the 
foundations on which we build.’ I have given you the earthquake hypothesis ; it 
is for those of you who oppose my conclusions to prove the firmness of your 
foundations. 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1i. 
The following Papers and Report were read :— 
1. The Genesis of Vowels. By R. J. Luoyn, D.Lit., A. 
After a general description of the vocal organs, the author classified vocal 
sounds according to origin as follows :— 
1. Glotial (originating from the glottis). 
2. Stomatic (originating from the stoma, or voice-passage), 
3. Glotto-stomatic (originating from both simultaneously). 
Class 2 may also be called toneless; but the others always either possess tone or 
are whispered. Class 2 cannot, strictly speaking, be either intoned or whispered. 
The movable units of speech (corresponding roughly to the letters of the 
alpbabet) are called phones, Phones are either vowels or consonants. The 
received division is somewhat arbitrary. Any phone which is the most sonorous 
phone in a syllable is the vowel of that syllable. There is hardly any phone 
which does not function in some locution of some language asa vowel. In the 
English words able, bitten, paddled, hadn't, 1 and n are yowels, but we are afraid 
