48 Address of the President at the Annual Meeting, 
that a large proportion of the species, and even of the genera, 
which have been distinguished by systematists, and especially 
by M. D'Orbigny, have no real existence, being nothing 
else than individual varieties. As I purpose to commu- 
nicate the results of my researches to the Royal Society, by 
whose liberal assistance I have been enabled to procure the 
execution of the beautiful series of microscopic drawings 
which I have exhibited to you from time to time, I am pre- 
cluded from entering into anticipatory details ; but I may 
mention that having had the opportunity some time since, of 
submitting my suites of specimens to a distinguished French 
Zoologist, and having directed his attention to a set of figures 
in M. D'Orbigny's " Fossil Foraminifera of Vienna," which, 
though there described under different names, were clearly 
proved by the continuity of my connecting series to be but one 
and the same, I asked him how it was possible for a naturalist 
of M. D'Orbigny's experience to make such blunders. His 
reply was, that the matter was perfectly simple, when M. 
D'O.'s mode of working was known ; for that, in examining any 
new collection, he set an assistant to pick out the most diver- 
gent forms, and then described all that might prove new to 
him as distinct species, without troubling himself in the least 
about those connecting links, the existence of which should 
have at once convinced him that he was following an altogether 
wrong method. Throughout the whole of his labours on this 
group, in fact, I trace the influence of the erroneous ideas 
which he originally entertained in regard to the nature of the 
animal of the Woraminifera ; for in the formation of his 
orders, as well as of his genera and species, he has proceeded 
as if the characters of the testaceous skeleton were of the same 
distinctive value, — when its construction is due merely to the 
solidification of the surface of a minute fragment of animal 
jelly, which is subject to an almost indefinite variation both 
in size and in shape, — as when it belongs to a mollusk of high 
organization, the plan of whose conformation is definitely 
fixed. I am happy to be able to add, that having recently had 
an opportunity of comparing the results of my observations, 
chiefly made upon the Australian and Philippine Foraminifera^ 
with those of Professor Williamson (of Manchester), which 
have been chiefly made upon British forms, I have had the 
satisfaction of finding his conclusions to accord so closely with 
mine, that I cannot entertain the slightest doubt of their 
general truth. We both of us find that there are certain 
species whose range of distribution is limited, and whose form 
is remarkably constant ; but we also find that in by far the 
greater number of cases, the species of Foraminfera are dis- 
