recent researches ojt sarcode obttanisms. 261 



The Anistiversart Address op the President, 



Professor Allman, M.D., LL.D., P.E.S. 



[Read May 24, 1876.] 



decent Researclies among some of the more simple 

 Sarcode Organisms. 



When addressing you last year in fulfilment of the duty which 

 annually devolves on your President, I believed that the object 

 intended to be gained by this custom would be best carried out 

 by making the. Address as nearly as possible an exponent of 

 recent progress in some special field of biological research. 



I then selected for our subject the group of the true or ciliate 

 Infusoria, and endeavoured to lay before you the principal steps by 

 which our knowledge of these minute organisms had been recently 

 advanced. 



Gruided on the present occasion by the same principle, I shall 

 endeavour to treat in a similar way certain other groups in whose 

 investigation much activity has shown itself within the last few 

 years — simple sarcodic organisms, among which are, indeed, the 

 simplest which it is possible to conceive — beings whose very sim- 

 plicity give them a significance which can scarcely be overesti- 

 mated in our investigations of the phenomena of life. 



The limits, however, which must of necessity be imposed on the 

 length of such an address render it impossible to treat the subject 

 in all the details which an exhaustive exposition would involve. 

 Much therefore, especially such as belongs to the description of 

 special forms, must be omitted from our review ; and I shall con- 

 fine myself mainly to the results of observations which have made 

 us acquainted with such forms and phenomena as have a more or 

 less direct significance in their relation to morphological types and 

 their bearing on physiological laws. 



Most of the organisms which I propose to bring under review 

 have probably their nearest relations with the animal rather than 

 with the plant ; but it must not be forgotten that the distinction 

 is in many eases arbitrary, and that we have often no reliable cha- 

 racter which will enable us to assert that the scarcely differen- 

 tiated particle of protoplasm before us belongs to the animal 

 kingdom rather than to the vegetable, or to the vegetable rather 

 than to the animal. 



This difficulty has been fully recognized by Haeckel, who has 



LINN. JOURN. — ZOOLOGY, VOL. XIII. 23 



