ANNIVERSAEY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 6 1 



they have unwisely undertaken, without the necessary training and 

 knowledge, the naming and description of forms of life which 

 required for their proper interpretation all the skill and experience 

 of the most able comparative anatomist or vegetable morphologist. 



I feel sure that if those who have thus erred, through acting with 

 " a zeal which is not according to knowledge," could realize the 

 injury done to science by such proceedings, they would pause before 

 burdening scientific literature with premature names, imperfect 

 diagnoses, and ill-digested materials. Fossils are, it is true, '* the 

 Medals of Creation," and for the purposes of the historian of past 

 geological times it may seem that any name, however bad, which 

 can be employed for purposes of reference must be better than none 

 at all. But fossils, it must be remembered, are mucli more than 

 mere " medals." They are the precious relics of the faunas and 

 floras of bygone times ; landmarks — the only ones we can ever hope 

 to discover — which may serve to guide us in tracing the wonderful 

 story of the evolution of the existing forms of life. Eeverently, as 

 the mineralogist treats meteorites — those pocket planets and errant 

 members of the outer universe — should the biologist regard fossils 

 — the fragments of an earlier life, the collateral, if not the direct, 

 ancestors of living types. 



So far am I from thinking that the study of fossils ought in all 

 cases to be undertaken by those who are actually engaged in work- 

 ing out their recent representatives, that I believe such a practical 

 abolition of Palaeontology as a distinct branch of science would tend, 

 not to the advantage, but to the injury of both Biology and Geology. 

 And I will venture to set forth my grounds for this conclusion. 



It may be remarked at the outset that at a time when all the 

 tendencies of Biological science appear to be towards an extreme 

 specialization, it is strange to find that there are advocates for the 

 suppression of what is now so well-developed a department of Biolo- 

 gical science as Palseontologj^ When the work to be done has 

 become so vast that some Biologists feel themselves compelled to 

 restrict their studies and labours to the Morphological, or even to 

 the Histological department, others to the Embryological, the Physio- 

 logical, the Taxonomic, or the Chorological branches of Zoology or 

 Botany respectively — why should not some concentrate their efforts 

 upon the elucidation of the ancient forms of life ? When the study 

 of a single group, often a very limited group, of animals or plants is 

 sufficient to exhaust the energies of a particular naturalist, it is 



