xl Annual Report of the Council. 



was spent. His early studies were palaeontological, growing by 

 natural extension to embrace the greater problems of stratigraphy 

 and reaching a climax in the investigation of the mechanism 

 of evolution of the earth's surface. 



Honoured as he was by all the world, this Society did itself 

 honour in electing him to its membership on April 30th, 1895. 



G. H. 



August Weismann. — By the death of August Weismann 

 on November 5th, 1914, we have lost one of the most dis- 

 tinguished investigators and profound thinkers in the field of 

 Biological Science. Like many others who have had the courage 

 to express their conceptions of the principles that regulate the 

 evolutionary processes of animals and plants, Weismann was not 

 able to gain recognition as a leading authority without a storm 

 of controversy and criticism. Both in his own and foreign 

 countries his theoretical ideas met with severe and often ill- 

 natured opposition, but throughout his long career he never 

 failed to maintain the high standard of scientific research and 

 discussion characteristic of a really great philosopher. As time 

 passes, some of his earlier conceptions may seem to us crude 

 and unsatisfactory, but we must realise that in his day Weis- 

 mann had the genius to arouse world-wide interest in his work, 

 to stimulate inquiry and to provoke discussion. In this respect 

 at least there were few men of his period that were his equal. 



Born on January 17th, 1834, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, 

 where his father was a Professor in the Gymnasium, he became 

 a student of medicine in Gottingen and afterwards of zoology 

 at Giessen. He became Professor Extraordinarius at Freiburg 

 in Breisgau in 1866 and Professor Ordinarius there in 1873. 

 On more than one occasion he had a call to a chair in a larger 

 and more important University in the German Empire, but he 

 remained at his post in Freiburg to the end. 



It is quite impossible in a short notice to do justice to the 

 extraordinarily wide and varied interests of his life's woik nor to 

 the richness of the ideas which brightened and enriched his 



