298 president's address. 



this and the previous Atlantic dredging expedition have been al- 

 lotted to certain of our members for description and publication. 

 The two great questions which have been referred to above, 

 " Spontaneous Generation " and the " Origin of Species," pos- 

 sess unabated interest for the student of Natural History. But 

 it is on the latter only, and that with reference chiefly to the 

 works of Messrs. Wallace and Mivart, that I propose briefly to 

 dwell this evening. It need scarcely be said that Mr. Darwin's 

 great work on this subject has encountered much hostile criti- 

 cism. The opposition which greeted it on its first appearance 

 was not so much directed against the theory of natural selection 

 as against the doctrine of evolution generally, which, though by 

 no means a new doctrine, had never previously been placed on 

 a natural or comprehensible basis. At the present time it may 

 be said that evolution in some form or other is held by almost 

 all naturalists, who likewise agree that the process of Natural 

 Selection, or the " Survival of the Fittest," though it may or 

 may not have been the most powerful factor in the production 

 of new species, must at least have exerted an influence by no 

 means insignificant. And, in justice to Darwin and Wallace, it 

 must be remembered that neither of them has claimed for the 

 principle the sole agency in the process : both have indeed dis- 

 tinctly recognized the probable existence of other, at present 

 unrecognized, but doubtless highly important directing and con- 

 trolling influences. Mr. Wallace, in his essay on the " Limits 

 of Natural Selection as applied to Man," attempts partially to 

 deal with the subject, and to show that certain characteristics, 

 more especially the highly developed brain and naked back of 

 man, are inexplicable by reference simply to Natural Selection. 

 Here we may admit that if Mr. Wallace's premises are accepted, 

 his conclusion acquires a high degree of probability : but for 

 myself, I am not disposed, without further proof, to accept these 

 premises. It has never been shown that brain power is in di- 

 rect and invariable proportion to bulk ; indeed the brain of an 

 idiot is mostly undistinguishable from that of an intelligent man, 

 and it appears certain, that had the brains of savages been so 

 much in excess of their needs as Mr. Wallace thinks, they would 



