668 REPORT— 1897. 



we gain results of permanent value, or shall we bring back nothing better than 

 unverified speculations and curious but unrelated facts ? 



The scientific career of Charles Darwin is, I think, a sufficient answer to such 

 doubts. I do not lay it down as an article of the scientific faith that Darwin's 

 theories are to be taken as true ; we shall refute any or all of them as soon as we 

 know how ; but it is a great thing that he raised so many questions which were well 

 worth raising. He set all scientific minds fermenting, and not only Zoology and 

 Botany, but Palaeontology, History, and even Philology bear some mark of his 

 activity. Whether his main conclusions are in the end received, modified, or 

 rejected, the effect of his work cannot be undone. Darwin was a bit of a sports- 

 man and a good deal of a geologist ; he was a fair anatomist and a working 

 systematist ; he keenly appreciated the value of exact knowledge of distribution. 

 I hardly know of any aspect of natural history, except synonymy, of which he 

 spoke with contempt. But he chiefly studied animals and plants as living beings. 

 They were to him not so much objects to be stuck through with pins, or pickled, 

 or dried, or labelled, as things to be watched in action. He studied their diffi- 

 culties, and recorded their little triumphs of adaptation with an admiring smile. 

 "We owe as many discoveries to his sympathy with living nature as to his exact- 

 ness or his candour, though these too were illustrious. It is not good to idolise 

 even our greatest men, but we should try to profit by their example. I think that 

 a young student, anxious to be useful but doubtful of his powers, may feel sure 

 that he is not wasting his time if he is collecting or verifying facts which would 

 have helped Darwin. 



Zoologists may justify their favourite studies on the ground that to know the 

 structure and activities of a variety of animals enlarges our sense of the possi- 

 bilities of life. Surely it must be good for the student of Human Physiology, to 

 take one specialist as an example of the rest, that he should know of many ways in 

 which the same functions can be discharged Let him learn that there are animals 

 (star-fishes) whose nervous system lies on the outside of the body, and that in 

 other animals it is generally to be found there during some stage of development ; 

 that there are animals whose circulation reverses its direction at frequent intervals 

 either throughout life (Tunicata) or at a particular crisis (insects at the time of 

 pupation) ; that there are animals with eyes on the back (Oncidiura, Scorpion), 

 on the shell (some Chitonidse), on limbs or limb-like appendages, in the brain- 

 cavity, or on the edge of a protective fold of skin ; that there are not only eyes of 

 many kinds with lenses, but eyes on the principle of the pin-hole camera without 

 lens at all (Nautilus) and of every lower grade down to mere pigment-spots ; that 

 auditory organs may be borne upon the legs (insects) or the tail (Mysis) ; that 

 they may be deeply sunk in the body, and yet have no inlet for the vibrations of 

 the sonorous medium (many aquatic animals). It is well that he should know of 

 animals with two tails (Oercaria of Gasterostomum) or with two bodies per- 

 manently united (Diplozoon) ; of animals developed within a larva which lives for 

 a considerable time after the adult has detached itself (some star-fishes and 

 Nemertines) ; of animals which lay two (Daphnia) or three kinds of eggs (Rotifera) ; 

 of eggs which regularly produce two (Lumbricus trapezoides) or even eight 

 embryos apiece (Praopus') ; of males which live parasitically upon the female 

 (Cirripedes), or even undergo their transformations, as many as eighteen at a time 

 in her gullet (Bonellia) ; of male animals which are mere bags of sperm-cells (some 

 Rotifera, some Ixodes, parasitic Copepods) and of female animals which are mere 

 bags of eggs (Sacculina, Entoconcha). The more the naturalist knows of such 

 strange deviations from the familiar course of things, the better will he be prepared 

 to reason about what he sees, and the safer will he be against the perversions of 

 hasty conjecture. 



If a wide knowledge of animals is a gain to Physiology and every other 

 branch of Biology, what opportunities are lost by our ignorance of the early stages 

 of so many animals ! They are often as unlike to the adult in structure and 



' Hermann von Jhering, Sitz. Bcrl. Akad., 1885; Biol. CentralhL, Bd. vi 

 pp. 532-5.39 (IPSG). 



