D.—ZOOLOGY. 95 
fertilisation of an Australian Orchid (Cryptostylis) by a male Ichneumonid 
(Lissopimpla), similarly attracted to the flower. 
On two occasions I have been present when the late Lord Balfour 
expressed his opinion on the theories of evolution we have been con- 
sidering to-day, and I am sure that naturalists will be glad to hear the 
conclusions reached by his keen and penetrating intellect on subjects in 
which, although without the time, or indeed the inclination, to probe far 
into details, he took the keenest interest. We know that, even before 
he went to Cambridge in 1866, he had read and admired the Origin, and 
we have been told by his nephew, Lord Rayleigh, of his ‘ extraordinary 
faculty for getting hold of the essentials of a subject without apparently 
feeling the need for systematic study.’* 
Over forty years ago, when the results of Weismann’s researches were 
extinguishing the Lamarckian element which had been added to the 
Darwin-Wallace theory, I heard Lord Balfour say that to him, as a 
student of philosophy, the new teachings on the scope of heredity were 
more interesting than the old. Again, in 1927, a few months before his 
eightieth birthday and before he began to dictate the charming but too 
brief Chapters of an Autobiography, he said that, looking back, he was 
impressed by the fact that nothing suggested in later years had replaced or 
modified the Darwinian theory of evolution. 
And now in conclusion, speaking at the close of the second half-century 
of our Society’s life, and speaking as one who owes more than he can 
express to the kindness and help received at these meetings, I cannot do 
_ better than remind you of prophetic words spoken at Oxford in 1832. 
Prof. Adam Sedgwick, responding after his nomination as president at 
Cambridge in the following year, said that the work of the Association 
_ at the meeting which had just been held could not but tend ‘ to engender 
- mutual friendship, mutual forbearance, mutual kindness and confidence’ ; 
and, for the future, ‘ he looked forward with full assurance to the happy 
results of this union between men of similar sentiments and similar 
} pursuits, who possess one common object—the improvement of mankind 
_by the promotion of truth.’ 
64 Proc. Roy. Soc., B., vol. 107, 1930, p. viii. 
