354 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 194. 



as large as might have been expected, es- 

 pecially when compared with the represen- 

 tation from Continental countries. The 

 Vice-Presidents elected were Professors E. 

 Collett, von Graaf, Haeckel, E.. Hertwig, 

 Jentink, Marsh, Milne-Edwards, Mitsukuri 

 and Salensky. 



The scientific proceedings of the Congress 

 were opened by Sir John Lubbock's presi- 

 dential address, which was delivered in the 

 Cambridge Guildhall. In accordance with 

 the example set by the three previous Presi- 

 dents — Professor Milne-Edwards, Count 

 Kapnist and Professor Jentink —Sir John 

 Lubbock's address was brief. He began by 

 reading a letter to the Congress from Sir 

 William Flower, and expressed his deep 

 personal regret at that gentleman's absence 

 and his sense of the loss the Congress had 

 thus sustained. He then proceeded to say : 

 I am painfully conscious how inadequately 

 I can fill Sir William Flower's place, but 

 my shortcomings will be made up for by 

 my colleagues, and no one could give our 

 foreign friends a heartier or more cordial 

 welcome than I do. The first Congress was 

 held at Paris in 1889 and was worthilj' pre- 

 sided over by Professor Milne-Edwards, 

 whom we have the pleasure of seeing here 

 to-day. The second Congress was held at 

 Moscow in 1892, under the presidency of 

 Count Kapnist and under the special patron- 

 age of his Imperial Highness the Grand 

 Duke Serge. The third Congress was at 

 Leyden in 1895, under the presidency of Dr. 

 Jentink, Director of the Royal Museum, 

 under the patronage of the Queen-Regent. 

 We assemble here to-day under the patron- 

 age of his Royal Highness the Prince of 

 Wales, with the support of her Majesty's 

 government and under the auspices of the 

 University of Cambridge. 



Such meetings are of great importance in 

 bringing together those interested in the 

 same science. It is a great pleasure and a 

 great advantage to us to meet our foreign 



colleagues. Moreover, it cannot be doubted 

 that these gatherings do much to promote 

 the progress of science. What a wonderful 

 thing it would be for mankind if we could 

 stop the enormous expenditure on engines 

 for the destruction of life and property and 

 spend the tenth, the hundredth, even the 

 thousandth, part on scientific progress. Few 

 people seem to realize how much science 

 has done for man, and still fewer how 

 much more it would do if permitted. More 

 students would doubtless have devoted 

 themselves to science if it were not so sys- 

 tematically repressed in our schools ; if 

 boys and girls were not given the impres- 

 sion that the field of discovery is well-nigh 

 exhausted. We, gentlemen, know how far 

 that is from being the case. Much of the 

 land surface of the globe is still unexplored ; 

 the ocean is almost unknown ; our collec- 

 tions contain thousands of new species 

 waiting to be described ; the life-histories of 

 many of our commonest species remain to 

 be investigated, or have only recently been 

 discovered. 



Take, for instance, the common eel. Until 

 quite recently its life history was absolutely 

 unknown. Aristotle pointed out that eels 

 were neither male nor female and that 

 their eggs were unknown. This remained 

 true until a few years ago. I^o one had 

 ever seen the egg of an eel, or a young 

 eel less than five centimeters in length. 

 We now know, thanks mainly to the re- 

 searches of Grassi, that the parent eels go 

 down to the sea and breed in the depths of 

 the ocean, in water not less than 3,000 feet 

 below the surface. There they adopt a 

 marriage dress of silver and their eyes con- 

 siderably enlarge, so as to make the most 

 of the dim light in the ocean depths. In 

 the same regions several small species of 

 fishes had been regarded as a special family 

 known as leptocephali. These also were 

 never known to breed. It now appears 

 that they are the larvse of eels, that known 



