SECTION C: CARDIFF, 1920. 



ADDEESS 



TO THE 



GEOLOGICAL SECTION 



BY 



FRANCIS ARTHUR BATHER, M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S., 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



FOSSILS AND LIFE. 



Of the many distinguished men who have preceded me in this chair 

 only eight can be described as essentially palaeontologists ; and among 

 them few seized the occasion to expound the broader principles of their 

 science. I propose, then, to consider the Relations of Palaeontology to 

 the other Natural Sciences, especially the Biological, to discuss its 

 particular contribution to biological thought, and to inquire whether its 

 facts justify certain hypotheses frequently put forward in its name. 

 Several of those hypotheses were presented to you in his usual masterly 

 manner by Dr. Smith Woodwaixi in 1909, and yet others are clearly 

 elucidated in two Introductions to Palaeontology which we have been 

 delighted to welcome as British products : the books by Dr. Morley 

 Davies and Dr. H. L. Hawkins. If I subject those attractive specula- 

 tions to cold analysis it is from no want of admiration or even sympathy, 

 for in younger days I too have sported with Vitalism in the shade 

 and been caught in the tangles of Transcendental hair. 



The Differentia of Palaeontology. 



Like Botany and Zoology, Palaeontology describes the external 

 and internal form and structure of animals and plants ; and on this 

 description it bases, first, a systematio classification of its material; 

 secondly, those broader inductions of comparative anatomy which con- 

 stitute morphology, or the science of foi'm. Arising out of these studies 

 are the questions of relation — real or apparent kinship, lines of descent, 

 the how and the why of evolution^ — the answers to which reflect their 

 light back on our morphological and classificatory systems. By a 

 different appi'oach we map the geographical distribution of genera and 

 species, thus helping to elucidate changes of land and sea, and so barring 

 out one hypothesis of racial descent or iinlocking the door to another. 

 Again, we study collective faunas and floras, unravelling the interplay 

 of their component animals and plants, or inferring from each assem- 

 blage the climatic and other physical agents that favoured, selected, and 

 delimited it. 



