THE PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 12] 
inferior animals, not only in mere physical organization, but still 
more in all the higher attributes of animal life, be not relative but 
absolute, then no multiplication of intermediate links can lessen the 
obstacles to transmutation. One true antidote therefore to such a 
doctrine, and to the consequent denial of primary distinctions of 
species, seems to offer itself in such broad and unmistakeable lines 
of demarkation as Professor Owen indicates, between the cerebral 
structure of man and that of the most highly developed of anthropoid 
or other mammals. 
Thus the widening range of observation is leading to other, yet 
related questions and discoveries of no slight importance. The 
whole compass of that latter one has been embraced in one aspect, 
in the remarkable introductory essay of Prof. Agassiz, “ On Classifi- 
cation,’ which accompanies the first portion of the great’ American 
work now issuing by him under the title of “ Contributions to the 
Natural History of the United States.” Like all that comes from 
the gifted pen of Louis Agassiz, the Hssay is bold, comprehensive, 
and valuable ; but also it is not free from conclusions akin to those 
which in others of that distinguished naturalist’s writings have been 
open to the charge of rash and hasty deductions from imaginary or 
defective premises. A more recent contribution to the same depart- 
ment of science is Prof Owen’s communication to the Zoological 
section of the British Association, ‘“‘On the Orders of Fossil and 
Recent Reptilia, and their distribution in time.” In introducing his 
subject Professor Owen remarked, that, ‘‘ with the exception of 
geology no collateral science had profited so largely from the study 
of organic remains as zoology. The catalogues of animal species 
have received immense accessions from the determination of the 
nature and affinities of those which have become extinct, and much 
deeper and clearer insight has been gained into the natural arrange- 
ment and sub-division of the classes of animals since paleontology 
has expanded our survey of them.”’ The result of such study in the 
hands of the great comparative anatomist, has not accordingly been 
to ignore species, but to reconsider their classifications. The boun- 
dary which modern zoological systems maintained between the classes 
Pisces and Reptilia is shown to be untenable, and a new group is 
discerned, within which extensive gradations of development link and 
blend together fishes, amphibia, and reptiles in one great natural 
series. No more important contribution has recently been made to 
