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ANNUAL ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, 



B. B. WooDWAUD, E.L.S., F.G.S., etc. 

 {Delivered 12th February, 1909.) 



DARWINISM AND MALACOLOGY. 



Members of the Malacological Society, — 



Among tlie several celebrations held of late years in honour of the 

 world's great men, there are certain that more particularly interest us 

 as Naturalists, for while concentrating our attention on one branch of 

 Nature, we do not, if we be true to ourselves, neglect its wider aspects. 



The bicentenary of the birth of Linneeus, and that of the birth of 

 BulSon, both fell in 1907. The jubilee of the announcement by 

 Darwin & Wallace of their independent discovery of the Origin of 

 Species by means of Natural Selection was held in July of last year. 

 To-night we celebrate the centenary of the birth of the distinguished 

 philosopher-naturalist, Darwin himself. 



To Linnaeus (1707-78), " the great lawgiver of systematic zoology," 

 as Huxley terms him {32, p. 104), we owe the introduction of method 

 into the study of the three Kingdoms of Nature. He enunciated the 

 true principles for defining genera and species, and this, with his 

 adoption of the simple binomial method of nomenclature, resulted in 

 an orderly and sj^stematic arrangement that enabled the ever-increasing 

 number of plants and animals to be sorted and provisionally placed 

 till their true affinities were ascertained. 



His necessarily arbitrary classifications have given way to more 

 natural arrangements in all the three Kingdoms, but the underlying 

 method has remained and enabled continuous progress to be made 

 down to the present time. 



Linnaeus is commonly regarded as having considered species to be 

 fixed entities in contradistinction to Classes and Orders, which were 

 invented for the convenience of the classifier, and this undoubtedly was 

 his earlier position in regard to the subject. Thus in his "Eunda- 

 menta Botanica" (45, 1736, p. 19, § 162) he wrote "Naturae opus 

 semper est Species et Genus," to which in his " Philosophia Botanica " 

 {Ij.9, 1751, p. 101, § 162) he added " Species constantissimse sunt, cum 

 earum generatio est vera continuatio." Later in life, however, he 

 obviously had his doubts on the subject, being confronted with the 

 djLfficulty of satisfactorily accounting for hybrids in plants, for in his 

 thesis "Fundamentum Eructificationis " in 1762 {50, p. 16, § 10) the 

 following remarkable passage occurs: — " Suspicio est quam diu fovi, 

 neque jam pro veritate indubia venditare audeo, sed per modum 

 hypotheseos propono : quod scilicet omnes species ejusdem generis ab 

 initio unam constituerint speciem, sed postea per generationes hybridas 

 propagates sint, adeo ut omnes congeneres ex una matre progenitae sint, 

 harum vero ex diverse patre diversse species factse." ^ 



* For more detailed remarks on Linnfeus and his opinions consult Geoffroy Saint 

 Hilaire (25, pp. 373-83) and Osborn {52, pp. 128-30). 



