46 ANNUAL REPORT OF 



mannerisms and the persistence of archaic types of animal life. 

 The analogy may be developed a little further. 



A tendency is to be noted nowadays toward accommodating 

 the spoken word to the written, that is to- say, there is purposeful 

 adaptation along definite lines. This tendency is adverted to by 

 Professor Lounsbury in following wise : "Colloquial or provin- 

 cial speech will long continue to retain the old pronunciation. 

 But even in those quarters they tend to die out with the increase 

 of the habit of reading and the steadily waxing influence of the 

 schoolmaster. Furthermore, in most, if not in all, of the instances 

 where anomalies now exist, or once existed, it will be found that 

 the current pronunciation represents a form of the word which 

 at some time or at some place prevailed in writing as well as in 

 sepaking. Illustrations of this are frequent. As good a one as 

 any is furnished by the name itself of our language. We spell it 

 Enghsh; we pronounce it Ing'glish; and we pronounce it so be- 

 cause by many it was once so spelled." And finally it is to> be 

 observed that all language is full of what Trench very happily 

 calls the "fossil remains of metaphors" — that is to say, words 

 which were once used to convey ideas by comparing them to 

 something known, but the figurative sense of which is now for- 

 gotten. Examples of this kind will occur to' the minds of every 

 reader. 



The object of the digression we have just made has been to 

 bring the reader directly in contact with some of the fundamental 

 facts with which palaeontology has to- deal, and to aid him to< an 

 understanding of them, or of their significance, through analogous 

 examples. Returning now to our main theme, we may say finally 

 of the Ostracophores and Arthrodires that they stand for diver- 

 gent groups which branched off at a remote date from the parent 

 stock, but failed to maintain their own as against later derivatives 

 of the same stem. In the end their fate was identical, and, which 

 is the more surprising, nearly contemporaneous with that of domi- 

 nant groups of invertebrates during the Palaeozoic, such as Trilo- 

 bites and Eurypterids. 



Blasmobranchs. — We have now to consider another very an- 

 cient, very primitive and very conservative group of fishes, one 

 which has retained the essential features of its organization prac- 



