﻿ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ixvii 



on calling my attention to this fact, observes, that, if this cirripede 

 has been correctly named, it implies with a high degree of probability 

 the presence of Cetacea in the cretaceous sea. It is absolutely certain 

 that a Tubicinella could live in no other way, except imbedded in 

 some soft substance, like the blubber of whales. Not only is the 

 recent Tubicinella invariably thus found, but all four species, in the 

 two nearest allied genera, Coronula and Siphonicella, a new genus of 

 Darwin, have similar habits, therefore it would be contrary to analogy 

 to suppose that a fossil Tubicinella should have been parasitic on any 

 class of animals except the mammalia. 



But while we are waiting for more positive information on this 

 subject, it may be affirmed that the theory of the imperfect develop- 

 ment of the mammalia in the cretaceous or oolitic eras, is sufficiently 

 refuted without the aid of a cetacean from the Kimmeridge clay, 

 seeing that in the antecedent slate of Stonesfield, nature had already 

 evolved both the placental and marsupial type of mammals. That 

 in an age of Enaliosaurians, most of them carnivorous, the Cetacea 

 may have been superseded to a great extent by large marine reptiles, 

 or may have been much less fully represented than in our own era, 

 when salt-water reptiles are almost unknown even in the tropics, is 

 highly probable ; just as wingless birds appear for ages to have pre- 

 dominated in New Zealand at the expense of the mammalia ; while 

 marsupial quadrupeds enjoyed a monopoly of Australia to the exclu- 

 sion of the placental. Yet before we indulge even in this hypothesis, 

 it will be prudent to wait for some years to see whether the reputed 

 relic of a cetacean in the Woodwardian Museum is the only fossil of 

 this class laying claims to so high an antiquity. 



At the risk of appearing to repeat the caution already enjoined by 

 me on the palaeontologist, I will venture to throw out another parting 

 hint on the subject of negative evidence. If we infer the poverty of the 

 flora or fauna of any given period of the past, from the small number 

 of fossils occurring in ancient rocks, we are bound to remember that it 

 has been evidently no part of the plan of Nature to hand down to us 

 a complete or systematic record of the former history of the animate 

 world. We may have failed to discover a single shell, marine or 

 freshwater, or one coral or bone in certain sandstones, such as that 

 of the valley of the Connecticut, where the foot-prints of animals 

 abound. But such failure may have arisen, not because the popula- 



/2 



