ANNIVERSAKY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Sj 



polyps, of which we can know nothing, it is only possible to place 

 them in existing orders on the ground of some very general analo- 

 gies in the skeleton. How little this may be worth, recent zoological 

 researches, like those of Professor Moseley on the Milleporidce and 

 the Stylasteridce, have amply shown. 



The students of existing forms of life have arranged their pigeon- 

 holes ; and into those pigeon-holes our unfortunate fossils are too 

 often made to go. If there were no other objection to the whole- 

 sale commingling of recent and fossil types in a museum, there would 

 always be the valid and insuperable one arising from the fact that 

 there are very considerable and important groups of fossils which 

 cannot, without violence, be made to find any place in our accepted 

 classification of existing animals — and perhaps never will. 



If, however, we consider the modifications which have been 

 brought about in our views concerning the relations of extinct to 

 living forms by the important discoveries that have been made 

 since 1862, we shall be impressed by the conviction that no com- 

 parison of the numbers of living and extinct orders can give any 

 adequate idea of the important influence of palaeontological studies 

 upon biological thought. The discovery of transitional forms, like 

 the Arclueopteryx^ the toothed birds of America, and the reptiles 

 with avian affinities ; the working out of the rich faunas of the 

 Rocky Mountains, of Pikermi, Quercy, and the Siwaliks ; of the Pam- 

 pean formations of South America, the Karoo beds of South Africa, 

 and the caves of Australia,' — these have already done much towards 

 revolutionizing the ideas held twentj^-five years ago by biologists 

 concerning the significance and value of fossil forms. While the 

 recognition of the less specialized precursors of such types as the 

 Horse and the Elephant has perhaps produced most effect in 

 removing objections to evolutionary doctrines, the light thrown 

 by the study of fossil forms on the manner in which individual 

 structures have arisen, as has been so well shown by Professor 

 Alexander Agassiz in the case of the Echinodermata, opens up to us a 

 wide and perhaps far more hopeful field of inquiry. We are, how- 

 ever, as yet only at the beginning of the great task of utilizing the 

 grand palaeontological collections of mammals, of reptiles, of fishes, 

 and of the various groups of the invertebrates, for explaining the 

 significance and tracing the origin of the structures found in living 

 types. 



While maintaining that studies of this kind demand and justify 



