186 Reports and Proceedings — 



auspices. He spoke of the progress of the Geological Survey, and 

 the new development made in maps and memoirs; and congratulated 

 the Palaeontographical Society upon attaining its 50th year of 

 existence. He thanked the Fellows for the support that they had given 

 to the Geological Magazine, now in the 32nd year of its existence. 



He then resumed the subject of his address of 1895, dealing this 

 year with " The Life-history of the Crustacea in Later Palaeozoic and 

 Neozoic Times." He pointed out that the great change between 

 Palaeozoic and Neozoic life was observable in the Carboniferous 

 period, when we reached the upward limit of the Trilobita, the 

 Eurypterida, and the Ceratiocaridae. But before these had dis- 

 appeared, the air-breathing Scorpions had already come into being 

 as far back as in the Upper Silurian period ; the Amphipods and 

 Isopods had also commenced, the former in the Upper Silurian and 

 the latter in the Devonian : this formation also revealed the earliest 

 Macruran decapod, a type still better represented in the succeeding 

 Coal-measures. He showed that there was no sharp division in the 

 Crustacea, but before one order died out and disappeared, other and 

 successive groups had already come into existence, thus illustrating 

 the same gradual evolution marked by so many other groups of 

 organisms. At the same time, he observed that many groups were 

 remarkably persistent, as the Ostracods and some Phyllopods, and 

 the King-crabs (Xiphosura). 



Dr. Woodward then traced briefly the development of the orders 

 Araphipoda, Isopoda, Cumaceae, Stomatopoda, Schizopoda, Macrura, 

 and Brachyura in time, giving a slight sketch of the life-line of each 

 great division and of some of the most noteworthy forms of the 

 several orders. He concluded his address as follows : — 



" Last year I invited your attention mainly to the state of our 

 knowledge of the earlier and simpler forms of Crustacea inhabiting 

 the Palaeozoic seas, placed in the great division of the Entomostraca. 

 I referred to the extinct Trilobita and the important advance in our 

 knowledge of this group which we owe to American palaeontologists. 

 I spoke of the Merostomata, including therein the Eurypterida and 

 Xiphosura — the former aquatic division being now entirely extinct, 

 but having, no doubt, given origin, in its remote ancestry, to the 

 terrestrial and air-breathing Scorpionidae, which have come down 

 from the Silurian epoch to our time, apparently but little changed in 

 structure ; whilst the latter (the living Xiphosura, ' King-crabs ') 

 have even adhered, in both their general form and their aquatic 

 mode of respiration and life, to their Palaeozoic progenitors. I dis- 

 cussed the Palaeozoic 'giant pod-shrimps,' Phyllocarida, placed 

 heretofore with the general group of the Phyllopoda, now claimed as 

 the direct ancestors of the modern Malacostraca, but still represented 

 by one living form, apparently but little changed — the genus Nebulin. 



" Of the other divisions of the Brachiopoda I said but little, nor 

 could I do justice to the Ostracoda and Copepoda, while as regards 

 the Cirripedia, on which Charles Darwin laboured so long and 

 exhaustively, I have been silent, because I found the whole subject 

 of the Crustacea more than sufficient for two addresses. 



