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each country were each especially qualified for the discharge 

 of some important function. But if that function is the 

 propagation of pestilence, what then ? If, with the new 

 school, we regard the Fauna or Flora of any country as 

 consisting of such species as have hitherto been able to hold 

 their ground in their struggle for existence, and which 

 possibly but incidentally render to man or to the world at 

 large benefits or injuries, all becomes intelligible. 



"We have further seen that there are animal forms depend- 

 ing for subsistence upon dead matter in every possible stage, 

 from the scarcely cold carcase, or the fruit or leaf just fallen 

 from the spray, on to the debris in which scarcely any trace 

 of organic structure remains. Without a supply of such 

 matter, these animals, as now constituted, could not exist. 

 The sexton-beetle implies small dead vertebrate animals (or 

 perhaps mollusks) ; the Dj/nastidcs pre-suppose the existence 

 of decaying trees, and the Geotrupidce that of herbivorous 

 mammals. If, therefore, we assume that every animal has 

 some especial and unalterable function for which its structure 

 is specially adapted, the scavengers of Nature cannot have 

 made their appearance until those animal and vegetable 

 species, whose remains they were fitted to remove, had been 

 for some time in existence, or had multiplied accordingly. 

 The carrion feeders would have been in evil case had they 

 come into being before deaths had become frequent. But if 

 we suppose that animals in the course of generations adapt 

 themselves both in structure and in habits to varying condi- 

 tions this difficulty ceases. It is surely conceivable that 

 animal forms which at one time preyed upon living animals 

 or growing plants have, as the competition for food increased, 

 gradually begun to subsist upon the dead remains of either, 

 and have thus taken their place among Nature's scavengers. 

 Thus a candid consideration of these creatures, their doings 

 and their conditions of life, supplies us-with valuable evidence 

 in favour of the doctrine of Organic Evolution." 

 MA V \oth, 1888. 



T. R. BiLLUPS, Esq., F.E.S., President, in the Chair. 

 Mr. W. Martin was elected a member. 

 Mr. T. R. Billups exhibited specimens o'i Hydaticus seminiger, 



