563rd ORDINAEY GENERAL MEKTIXd. 



HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, 

 WESTMINSTER, ON MONDAY, FEBRUARY 1st, 1915, 



AT 4.30 P.M. 



Arthur W. Sutton, Esq., J.P., E.L.S., Treasurer, 

 in the Chair. 



The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read and confirmed. 



The Chairman, in introducing Prof. Ernest W. MacBride, expressed 

 to him the thanks of all present for his coming to read a paper to them 

 on a subject of such great interest and importance. 



THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE THEORY OF 

 ORGANIC EVOLUTION By Prof. Ernest W. 

 MacBride, M.A, F.K.S. 



I HAVE chosen the subject of the theory of evolution as a 

 theme on which to address you for several reasons ; first 

 because of all biological subjects this theory awakens the most 

 general interest on account of its far-reaching implications ; 

 second, because I regard it as touching one of the two root 

 problems of biological science, viz., the nature of heredity, and 

 hence it possesses for me a supreme interest ; and thirdly, because 

 the theory in the form in which Darwin presented it to the 

 world has been challenged by leading biologists at the present 

 time, and this challenge has raised a very lively controversy in 

 scientific circles which is still going on. Since we have all read 

 the Origin of Species, one might assume that all my hearers 

 are familiar with Darwin's position, but perhaps, since it is 

 doubtless a considerable time since any of us have read the 

 celebrated Origin with care, it may not be out of place to 

 summarize the position taken up in that famous book. 



The mere idea that in some way the forms of animals had 

 changed as time progressed, and that different forms of animals 

 had originated from the same ancestral species, was by no means 

 propounded for the first time by Darwin. As he shows in the 

 Origin of Species, such an idea had been put forward repeatedly 

 from the time of Aristotle until the present. The merit of 



