Sir John Lubbock’s Address. 269 
Report on Astronomy by Sir G. Airy ; I may be pardoned, I 
trust, for expressing my pleasure at finding that the second was 
one by my father, on the Tides, prepared, like the preceding, at 
the request of the Council; then comes one on Meteorology by 
Forbes, Radiant Heat by Baden Powell, Optics by Brewster, 
Mineralogy by Whewell, and so on. My best course will 
therefore be to take our different Sections one by one, and 
endeavor to bring before you a few of the principal results 
which have been obtained in each department. 
The Biological Section is that with which I have been most 
intimately associated, and with which it is, perhaps, natural 
that I should begin. : 
Fifty years ago it was the general opinion that animals and 
plants came into existence just as we now see them. We took 
pleasure in their beauty; their adaptation to their habits and 
mode of life in many cases could not be overlooked or misun- 
derstood. Nevertheless, the book of Nature was like some 
richly illuminated missal, written in an unknown tongue; the 
graceful forms of the letters, the beauty of the coloring, ex- 
cited our wonder and admiration; but of the true meanin 
little was known to us; indeed we scarcely realized that there 
the previous year he and Wallace had published short papers, 
D 
excited great opposition. Nevertheless from the first they met 
with powerful support, especially, in thiscountry, from Hooker, 
Huxley and Herbert Spencer. The theory is based on four 
axioms :— 
“1. That no two animals or plants in nature are identical in 
all respects. vines 
“2. That the offspring tend to inherit the peculiarities of 
their parents. 
“3. That of those which come into existence, only a small 
number reach maturity. 
“4. That those, which are, on the whole, best adapted to 
the circumstances in which they are placed, are most likely to 
eave descendants,” 
