SECTION D.—ZOOLOGY. 
A HUNDRED YEARS OF EVOLUTION. 
ADDRESS BY 
PROF. E. B. POULTON, D.Sc., LL.D., F.RS., 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
THINKING over the subject of this address, I have been encouraged by a 
metaphor given me by Oliver Wendell Holmes at a delightful dinner of 
the Boston ‘ Saturday Club’ in January, 1894—“ Memory in old age is a 
palimpsest with the records beneath standing out more clearly than those 
above.’ And, indeed, memories of my first British Association, at York 
in 1881, are clearer than those of many in later years. It was a great 
meeting, as befitted the fiftieth anniversary, and nearly every Sectional 
President had been a President of the Association. It also marked a 
turning-point in evolutionary controversy, being, I believe, the last meeting 
at which opposition was offered to evolution as apart from its motive 
cause or causes. From 1881 onwards the battles in this Section have 
been over Lamarckism and Natural Selection, and their factors, especially 
Heredity ; over the size of the steps and the rate of progress. Evolution 
itself has been generally accepted. It was different at York in 1881. 
Dr. Wright’s indignation, when the Reptilian affinites of Archwopteryx 
were explained in the Geological Section, was stirred by the hated doctrine 
which gave meaning and life to the demonstration. I well remember, 
too, how Prof. O. C. Marsh, discussing one of the meetings in this Section 
with a young and inexperienced naturalist, said that he had felt rather 
anxious about the way in which his paper on the Cretaceous toothed 
birds of America would be received by the President, Sir Richard Owen. 
His fears were, however, groundless, and all was well. 
The difference between the controversies raised in the first and the 
second of these half-centuries of evolution reminds us that long before 
Darwin saw his way to an explanation of evolution he was satisfied that 
evolution was a fact; reminds us, too, that we are celebrating another 
_ great centenary, for he sailed in the Beagle on December 27, 1831, thus 
entering upon the five years’ voyage which, in his own words, “was by far 
the most important event in my life, and has determined my whole career ’ 
—the voyage which provided him with the evidence that evolution is a fact. 
The idea of Natural Selection as a motive cause did not come to him until 
October 1838, just two years after his return. 
The independent discovery and publication of the principle of Natural 
Selection by Dr. W. C. Wells! in 1818 and by Patrick Matthew in 1831 
1 Wells, like Matthew and Chambers, was a Scotsman. He was born (May 1757) 
of Scottish parents in Charlestown, South Carolina. In the troubled times preceding 
the Declaration of Independence his father, to quote his own words, ‘ obliged me to 
wear a tartan coat, and a blue Scotch bonnet, hoping by these means to make me 
consider myself a Scotchman. The persecution I hence suffered produced this effect 
completely.’ 
