6o 



6th Aprils i8gj. 



Professor J. D. Everett, f.r.s., d.c.l., in the Chair. 



Mr. Ernest W. MacBride, m.a., b.sc, deHvered a lecture on 



" STARFISH AND SEA URCHINS : THEIR HAUNTS 

 AND HISTORY." 



Mr. MacBride proceeded with his lecture, which was illus- 

 trated by a special series of lantern slides thrown on the screen 

 by Mr. Nicholl. He prefaced a most interesting discourse, 

 which described in detail the various species of starfish and 

 sea urchins by pointing out that the investigation of these 

 animals proved the fact that nature did not consist of isolated 

 things, but was a coherent whole; that the laws of life which 

 had fashioned the sea urchins were the same which had operated 

 in human history. The lecturer then described in popular 

 fashion the life history of starfish and vertebrate animals wiih 

 the view of showing that both emerged from the same ancestors. 

 Even if this, however, were not the case, the identity of the 

 laws of life governing our own frame with those which had 

 moulded the humblest denizens of the sea would justify 

 Tennyson when he with true philosophical insight said of the 

 flower. 



"If I could understand 



What you are, root and all, and all in all, 



I should know what God and Man is." 



" There is more difference," said the great German naturalist 

 Nagele," between the simplest microbe and dead matter than 

 between the microbe and man." 



