PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 7 



Another consideration of the greatest importance arises from the 

 study of the fossil remains of the animals that formerly inhabited the 

 earth. It was the elder Agassiz who first directed attention to the 

 remarkable agreement between the embryonic growth of animals and 

 their pala3ontological history. He pointed out the resemblance 

 between certain stages in the growth of young fish and their fossil 

 representatives, and attempted to establish, with regard to fish, a 

 correspondence between their palseontological sequence and the 

 successive stages of embryonic development. He then extended his 

 observations to other groups, and stated his conclusions in these 

 words : 1 ' It may therefore be considered as a general fact, very likely 

 to be more fully illustrated as investigations cover a wider ground, that 

 the phases of development of all living animals correspond to the order 

 of succession of their extinct representatives in past geological times.' 



This point of view is of the utmost importance. If the development 

 of an animal is really a repetition of its ancestral history, then it is 

 clear that the agreement or parallelism which Agassiz insists on 

 between the embryological and palseontological records must hold good. 

 Owing to the attitude which Agassiz subsequently adopted with regard 

 to the theory of Natural Selection, there is some fear of his services in 

 this respect failing to receive full recognition, and it must not be 

 forgotten that the sentence I have cpioted was written prior to the clear 

 enunciation of the Recapitulation Theory by Fritz Midler. 



The imperfection of the geological record has been often referred to 

 and lamented. It is very true that our museums afford us but 

 fragmentary pictures of life in past ages ; that the earliest volumes of 

 the history are lost, and that of others but a few torn pages remain to 

 us ; but the later records are in far more satisfactory condition. The 

 actual number of specimens accumulated from the more recent forma- 

 tions is prodigious ; facilities for consulting them are far greater than 

 they were ; the international brotherhood of science is now fully 

 established, and the fault will be ours if the material and opportunities 

 now forthcoming are not rightly and fully utilised. 



By judicious selection of groups in which long series of specimens 

 can be obtained, and in which the hard skeletal parts, which alone 

 can be suitably preserved as fossils, afford reliable indications of 

 zoological affinity, it is possible to test directly this correspondence 



1 L. Agassiz, Essay on Classification, 1859, p. 115. 



