J 74 



SCIENCE. 



Hence it will be seen that there is a gradual passage from 

 one type to the other by the disappearance of one character 

 and the appearance of another, certain characters in the 

 meanwhile remaining common, so that there is no sudden 

 break, but an overlapping of structural characteristics. It 

 is, I think, satisfactory to find that, when erupted rocks are 

 examined from such a new and independent point of view, 

 the general conclusions to which I have been led are so 

 completely in accord with those arrived at by other methods 

 of study. 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 



The address was delivered by Mr. F. M. Balfour, F.R.S., 

 one of the vice-presidents of the section, who observed 

 that in the spring of the present year Prof. Huxley delivered 

 an address at the Royal Institution, to which he gave the 

 felicitous title of " The Coming of Age of the Origin of 

 Species." It was, as Prof. Huxley pointed out, twenty-one 

 years since Mr. Darwin's great work was published, and 

 the present occasion, Mr. Balfour remarked, was an appro- 

 priate one to review the effect which it had had on the progress 

 of biological knowledge. There was, he might venture to 

 say, no department of Biology the growth of which has not 

 been profoundly influenced by the Darwinian theory. When 

 Messrs. Darwin and Wallace first enunciated their views to 

 the scientific world, the facts they brought forward seemed 

 to many naturalists insufficient to substantiate their far- 

 reaching conclusions. Since that time an overwhelming 

 mass of evidence has, however, been rapidly accumulating 

 in their favor. Facts which at first appeared to be opposed 

 to their theories have one by one been shown to afford 

 striking proofs of their truth. There are at the present 

 time but few naturalists who do not accept in the main the 

 Darwinian theory, and even some of those who reject many 

 of Darwin's explanations still accept the fundamental posi- 

 tion, that all animals are descended from the common stock. 

 To attempt in the time at his disposal to trace the influence 

 of the Darwinian theory on all the branches of anatomy 

 and physiology would be wholly impossible, and he would 

 confine himself to an attempt to do so for a small section 

 only. There was perhaps no department 'of Biology 

 which had been so revolutionized by the theory of 

 animal evolution as that of development or Embryo- 

 logy. The reason of this is not far to seek. 

 According to the Darwinian theory, the present order of the 

 organic world has been caused by the action of two laws, 

 known as the laws of heredity and of variation. The law 

 of heredity is familiarly exemplified by the well-known fact 

 that offspring resemble their parents. Not only, however, 

 do the offspring belong to the same species as their parents, 

 but they inherit the individual peculiarities of their parents. 

 It is on this that the breeders of cattle depend, and it is a 

 fact of every-day experience amongst ourselves. A further 

 point with reference to heredity to which he must call their 

 attention was the fact that the characteristics which display 

 themselves at some special period in the life of the parent 

 are acquired by the offspring at a corresponding period. 

 Thus, in many birds the males have a special plumage in 

 the adult state. The male offspring is not, however, born 

 with the adult plumage, but only acquires it when it be- 

 comes adult. The law of variation is, in a certain sense, 

 opposed to the law of heredity. It asserts that the resem- 

 blance which offspring bear to their parents is never exact. 

 The contradiction between the two laws is only apparent. 

 All variations and modifications in an organism are directly 

 or indirectly due to its environments ; that is to say, they 

 are rather produced by some direct influence acting upon 

 the organism itself, or by some more subtle and mysterious 

 action on its parents ; and the law of heredity really asserts 

 thai the offspring and parent would resemble each other if 

 th( ii environments were the same. Since, however, this is 

 never the case, the offspring always differ to some extent 

 from the parents. Now, according to the law of heredity, 

 acquired variation i <! »ds to be inherited! so that, by a 

 summation of small changes, the animals may come to 



differ from their parent stock to an indefinite extent. Mr. 



Balfour then referred to what he spoke of as a con- 

 crete example of the application of these two laws, his 

 object being to demonstrate how complctel] modern em- 

 bryological naming Is dependent on inheritance and varia- 



lion, which constitute the keystones of the Darwinian the- 

 ory. He maintained that "The Origin of Species " afforded 

 explanations of important embryological facts, and added 

 that no explanation, for instance, could be offered of the 

 fact that a frog in the course of its growth has a stage in 

 which it breathes like a fish, and then why it is like a newt 

 with a long tail, which gradually becomes absorbed, and 

 finally disappears. To the Darwinian the explanation of 

 such facts is obvious. The stage when the tadpole breathes 

 by gills is a repetition of the stage when the ancestors of 

 the frog had not advanced in the scale of development be- 

 yond a fish, while the newt-like stage implies that the ances- 

 tors of the frog were at one time organized very much like 

 the newts of to-day. The explanation of such facts has 

 opened out to the embryologist quite a new series of prob- 

 lems. Having examined these in regard to phylogeny and 

 organogeny, and entering into elaborate scientific details 

 and arguments, Mr. Balfour concluded by remarking that 

 although the present state of our knowledge on the genesis 

 of the nervous system is a great advance on that of a few 

 years ago, there is still much remaining to be done to make 

 it complete. The subject, he urged, was well worth the at- 

 tention of the morphologist, the physiologist, or even the 

 psychologist, and we must not remain satisfied by filling up 

 the gaps in our knowledge by such hypotheses as he had 

 been compelled to frame. New methods of research will 

 probably be required to grapple with the problems that are 

 still unsolved; but when we look back and survey what has 

 been done in the past, there can be no reason for mistrust- 

 ing our advance in the future. 



RELATION OF VERMONT ARCHEOLOGY TO 

 THAT OF THE ADJACENT STATES.* 



By Dr. George H. Perkins. 



Vermont is a very barren region archaeologically as com- 

 pared with many parts of the West, yet thorough inves- 

 tigation has shown that even there interesting results may 

 be obtained. We not only have found a not inconsiderable 

 number of stone relics, but we have also found, as we think, 

 an interesting relation between these specimens and those 

 from surrounding States. West of the Green Mountains 

 we find our greatest variety of objects, and we find at least 

 two classes, and perhaps more, which should be referred to 

 different people. Here and there, but especially near 

 Lake Champlain, we find objects of copper, and polished 

 stone much more skillfully made than most of the speci- 

 mens found in New England. In certain graves found 

 near Swanton, and described fully at the Portland meeting 

 of this Association, we find this class of objects. A peculiar 

 form of slate knife (or lance?), polished and with 

 notched haft, is found in Western Vermont, but oc- 

 curs in greater abundance across the lake in New York and 

 in Central New York. At Palatine Bridge Mr. S. L. 

 Frey has discovered graves of the same kind as those 

 found at Swanton. Taking these finer specimens of ancient 

 workmanship as a basis of comparison, leaving out of ac- 

 count the ruder stone objects and the pottery, we can 

 duplicate most of our Vermont specimens in Central New 

 York, and also we find from Western New York and the 

 mounds of Ohio many which are identical in all essential 

 characters. This is true of shell and copper beads, of cop- 

 per spear-heads, of stone tubes, axes, gorgets, banner stones 

 and other objects. As we go westward we find these spec- 

 imens increasing in number and of greater variety, and we 

 also find a few forms absent. These specimens seem 

 to me sufficiently characteristic and numerous to warrant 

 the inference that in them we have a record of a people who 

 emigrated from Ohio through New York, crossed Lake 

 Champlain and reached as tar east as the Green Mountains, 

 where they stopped. They also appear not to have reached 

 further north than Northern Vermont, nor further south 

 than the southern end of Lake Champlain. 



The other class of relics is composed of ruder objects 

 associated with pottery. So far as I know no pottery has 

 been found with the first class of relics. This pottery is 

 quite unlike that from the mounds or most of that found 



Read before t lie A. A. A.S., Boston, 1880. 



