52 - Royal Irish Academy. 



Although for some years back Dr. Allman has transferred his per- 

 sonal activity to the wider field of the sister kingdom, yet he has never 

 ceased to be heartily and thoroughly identified with this Academy, 

 and with this country. It will, therefore, not require many words 

 to explain to the Academy the grounds on which the Council decided 

 to confer on him a Cunningham Gold Medal. 



The varied and beautiful forms of life which under the names of 

 Zoophytes, of Polypes, or of Anthozoa, the corals and sea flowers, have 

 excited so much popular interest and have been objects of so much 

 instructive inquiry, were, even after the recognition of their animal 

 nature, considered until lately to belong exclusively to the lowest 

 stage of animal existence, the Radiata of Cuvier ; and their structure 

 was supposed to be only the elementary form of a digestive sac, whose 

 aperture was surrounded by retractile arms, to which nutriment was 

 conveyed by vibrating cilia, expanded over the solid base or polypo- 

 dome to which the associated organisms belonged. It was, however, 

 discovered that, among the bodies usually known as Polypes, great 

 diversity of habits and of structure could be observed. Among the 

 first to recognise this diversity, and to point out that certain forms of 

 Polypes were of much higher organization than others, and should 

 occupy a much higher place in zoological classification than had been 

 previously supposed, was our fellow-countryman, Mr. J. V. Thompson, 

 already distinguished by his remarkable discovery of the larval meta- 

 morphoses of certain of the Crustacea, but unhappily since so prema- 

 turely lost to Science. His observations, verified and followed up by 

 various foreign naturalists, were extended and completed by Professor 

 Allman with admirable skill and perseverance, great originality of 

 thought, and closeness of reasoning, in the remarkable series of memoirs 

 by which the history of these animals has been entirely remodelled, 

 and placed on its really scientific basis, their extraordinary phases of 

 reproduction made known, and their true position in the scale of 

 organic existence demonstrated. 



I have said that the result of the researches of Dr. Allman and of 

 his fellow-labourers in the same field, of whose merits he has on all 

 occasions in his writings shown himseK most scrupulously and deli- 

 cately appreciative, has been to prove that certain classes of the 

 so-called Polypes belong to certain types of organization much higher 

 than the radiate, approaching even to the lower divisions of the 



