British Association, 



8255 



Rolleston concluded by saying that if he had expressed himself with any unnecessary 

 vehemence he was sorry for it, but that he felt there were things less excusable than 

 vehemence, and that the laws of ethics and love of truth' were things higher and better 

 than were the rules of etiquette or decorous reticence. 



Mr. W. H. Flower, looking at the subject solely in an anatomical view and as a 

 question of fact, stated that the result ofa considerable number of dissections of brains 

 of various monkeys was, that the distinction between the brain of man and monkeys did 

 not lie in the posterior lobe or the hippocampus minor, which p:irts were proportion- 

 ately more largely developed in many monkeys than in man, and that if these parts were 

 used in the classification of man and the monkeys the series would be — first, the little 

 South American marmosets, then would follow the baboons, the cercopithei, the mac- 

 aques; then man must be placed, followed by the antropoid apes, the orang-outang, 

 chimpanzee and gorilla, and last the American howling monkey. 



Dr. Humphery and Dr. Molesworth having said a few words, 



Professor Owen replied. Professor Rolleston had led the meeting to conclude that 

 he had not paid any attention to the convolutions of the brain of mammals, and that 

 the investigation of this subject was the exclusive property of the German anatomists, 

 whereas he might be permitted to state that almost at the very time that Leuret wrote 

 his memoir on this subject he had delivered a course of lectures on the convolutions 

 of the brain, which, he regretted, had not been published, owing to the pressure of other 

 labours ; but the diagrams were still in existence, as his successor could testify, in the 

 Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. 



Professor Owen next made some observations on the homologies of the bones of 

 the head of Polypterus niloticus. 



The next subject taken up by Prof. Owen was "On the Characters of the Aye-aye 

 as a Test of the Lamarckian and Darwinian Hypothesis of the Transmutation and 

 Origin of Species." 



Mr. Newton read observations by Mr. A. D. Bartlett " On the Habits of the Aye- 

 aye living in the Gardens of the Zoological Society, Regent's Park, London." 



Professor Huxley observed that the Darwinian hypothesis must be worked out by 

 patient inquiry, and be either confirmed or refuted by investigations and facts, which 

 could hardly at present be gone into. All the necessary facts had not yet been dis- 

 covered, and, if discovered, their significance could hardly be put clearly before a 

 general audience. 



The other papers read were by Dr. Cleland, " On Ribs and Transverse Processes, 

 with special relation to the theory of the vertebrate skeleton ;" and by Prof. Allman, 

 " On the Structure of the Corymorpha." 



Professor Owen exhibited and described the tooth of a mastodon, from tertiary 

 marls near Shanghai, China. 



Mr. H. C. Sorby, F.R.S., " On the Cause of the Difference in the State of Preser- 

 vation of different kinds of Fossil Shells." 



Dr. Allman, F.R.S., "On a New Form of Recent Echinoderm, and on its probable 

 ontological Affinities." 



Mr. J. W. Salter, F.G.S., " On the Identity of the Upper Old Red Sandstone 

 with the Uppermost Devonian (the Marwood Beds of Murchison and Sedgwick), and 

 of the Middle and Lower Old Red with the Middle and Lower Devonian." 



Mr. S. P. Saville exhibited a skull of the Rhinoceros tichorhinus. 



Dr. John Davy read a paper " On the Scientific Cultivation of Salmon Fisheries," 



