Febbuaey 21, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



261 



nation which is elsewhere regarded as con- 

 tradicted by all sound morphological doc- 

 trine.* The value of the characters distinc- 

 tive of the Rhynchocephalian reptiles and 

 their consequent significance for taxonomy 

 and paleontology were also denied by him. 

 Nevertheless, even his negative position 

 was of use in that it incited investigation. 

 The numerous memoirs on the anatomy and 

 characteristics of various groups of animals, 

 too, were always replete with new facts and 

 the hints were almost always sagacious, 

 even if not always in exactly the right 

 direction. 



I am inclined to credit mainly to his sa- 

 gacity the early appreciation of the afi&nity 

 of the Neoceratodus of Australia to the me- 

 sozoic Ceratodontids with all the far-reach- 

 ing consequences that appreciation in- 

 volved. It was in 1870 that the living 

 Ceratodontid was introduced to the scien- 

 tific world as Ceratodus Forsteri, and thus 

 generically associated with the mesozoic 

 fishes. How did Krefft (or Clarke) get 

 the idea of this association of a living fish 

 with some known only from fossil teeth re- 

 ferred by Agassiz to the same family as the 

 Cestraciont sharks ? In 1861 Huxley pub- 

 lished a ' Preliminary Essay upon the Sys- 

 tematic Arrangement of the Fishes of the 

 Devonian Epoch,' and therein suggested 

 that Ceratodus was a Ctenodipterine fish 

 and ranged it (with a mark of interroga- 

 tion) by the side of Dipterus. He also drew 

 ' attention to the many and singular rela- 

 tions which obtain between that wonderful 

 and apparently isolated fish, Lepidosiren,' 

 and the Ctenodipterine fishes. (The exact 

 truth was not discovered, but was approxi- 

 mated.) Is it not probable that this mem- 

 oir was known to Clarke, who claimed to 

 have suggested to Krefft the systematic re- 



* The great English morphologists (such as Balfour 

 and Eay Lankester) and A. Smith Woodward among 

 systematic ichthyologists have recognized the hetero- 

 geneity of the old class of fishes. 



lations of newly discovered Australian dip- 

 noan? It was creditable to both Clarke 

 and Krefft that they did recognize this re- 

 lationship and profited by their biblio- 

 graphical knowledge, but it is doubtful 

 whether they would have been able to 

 make the identification or appreciate the 

 importance of the discovery had not Huxley 

 prepared partly the way. By this dis- 

 covery, our acquaintance with the ichthyic 

 faunas of both the present and past was 

 almost revolutionized. 



Among the most important results of 

 Huxley's investigations were the discovery 

 and approximately correct recognition of 

 the nature of the ' peculiar gelatinous 

 bodies ' found in all the seas, whether ex- 

 tra-tropical or tropical, through which the 

 ' Rattlesnake ' sailed, and which were 

 named Thalassicola, precursors of radiola- 

 rian hosts afterwards to be brought to light ; 

 the appreciation of the closeness of the rela- 

 tions between birds and reptiles, the destruc- 

 tion of the old basis for the classification of 

 birds, the recognition that mammals may 

 have originated from a low type of Verte- 

 brates and even the Amphibians, and the 

 perception of the comparative affinities of 

 the southern forms of Astacoidean crusta- 

 ceans and their contrast as a group with the 

 forms of the northern hemisphere. I must 

 resist the temptation to further enumerate 

 the great naturalist's discoveries and gener- 

 alizations, but finally let me add that not 

 the least of his services to science was de- 

 structiveness in the death-blow he gave to 

 the vertebral theory of the skull at one 

 time so generally accepted in England and 

 this country. 



V. 



While the contest between the old and 

 new schools of biological philosophy was at 

 its height, the former was almost entirely 

 supported by the religious element and bit- 

 ter were the invectives against evolution. 

 The opposition was almost solelj' based on 



