puesident’s address. 
159 
originate in the warm regions of the earth, and migrate to the 
inhospitable regions around the North Pole. Wo are acciuainted 
with endless forms of life, both from paheontological research and 
present experience, which have become degraded owing to 
inevitable circumstances, or liavo succumbed in the struggle for 
existence; but I am unacquainted with any facts that lead us 
to suppose that animals have willingly exchanged a presumably 
better for a more antagonistic sphere of existence. The Musk- 
Sheep that now exist in large numbers in Grinnell Land, within 
live hundred miles of the North Pole, are not confined there by any 
geographical necessity : they could retreat to more hospitable lands, 
if it suited them. On the other hand, if wo regard the Musk- 
Sheep as an animal whoso ancestor originated in the Polar area, 
when a temperate climate existed there, and through the change of 
climate, and the incidences of natural selection, and the survival of 
the fittest, evolved itself as a creature capable of supporting the 
vicissitudes of glacial existence, wo have, I venture to submit, 
a more reasonable theory than that this circumpolar animal should 
have originated in the warmer regions of the earth, and migrat<id 
to its present habitats. The Pinnipedia, which comprise the 
amphibious Seals and Walruses, and which animals have their chief 
development in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, seem another 
case in jioint. The presumption is, that the Pinnipedia derive 
their origin from carnivorous land animals, and that they have 
adapted themselves to an amphibious existence. No fossils have 
been discovered in the warm regions of the earth that illustrate the 
incoming of the Seals : they appear first in the ^Miocene formations, 
as highly specialized creatures. It appears as probable that our 
northern Seals originated in a Polar land, and were forced to 
an amphibious existence, as that they originated in the warmer 
regions of the earth and spread northwards. 
A very suggestive case in point is that of Steller’s Pthytina. 
The history of the discovery of that very curious and highly 
specialized animal at Bering Island in 1741, and its rapid 
extinction, are fircts doubtless well known to most of you here 
present. But I would more especially refer to its very remarkable 
