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SCIENCE. 
Hence it will he seen that there is a gradual passage from 
one type to the other by the disappearance of one character 
and the appearance of another, certain characters in the 
meanwhile remaining common, so that there is no sudden 
break, but an overlapping of structural characteristics. It 
is, I think, satisfactory to find that, when erupted rocks are 
examined from such a new and independent point of view, 
the general conclusions to which I have been led are so 
completely in accord with those arrived at by other methods 
ol study. 
ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 
The address was delivered by Mr. F. M. Balfour, F.R.S., 
one of the vice-presidents of the section, who observed 
that in the spring of the present year Prof. Huxley delivered 
an address at the Royal Institution, to which he gave the 
felicitous title of “ The Coming of Age of the Origin of 
Species.” It was, as Prof. Huxley pointed out, twenty-one 
years since Mr. Darwin’s great work was published, and 
the present occasion, Mr. Balfour remarked, was an appro- 
priate one to review the effect which it had had on the progress 
of biological knowledge. There was, he might venture to 
say, no department of Biology the growth of which has not 
been profoundly influenced by the Darwinian theory. When 
Messrs. Darwin and Wallace first enunciated their views to 
the scientific world, the facts they brought forward seemed 
to many naturalists insufficient to substantiate their far- 
reaching conclusions. Since that time an overwhelming 
mass of evidence has, however, been rapidly accumulating 
in their favor. Facts which at first appeared to be opposed 
to their theories have one by one been shown to afford 
striking proofs of their truth. There are at the present 
time but few naturalists who do not accept in the main the 
Darwinian theory, and even some of those who reject many 
of Darwin’s explanations still accept the fundamental posi- 
tion, that all animals are descended from the common stock. 
To attempt in the time at his disposal to trace the influence 
of the Darwinian theory on all the branches of anatomy 
and physiology would be wholly impossible, and he would 
confine himseif to an attempt to do so for a small section 
only. There was perhaps no department of Biology 
which had been so revolutionized by the theory .of 
animal evolution as that of development or Embryo- 
logy. The reason of this is not far to seek. 
According to the Darwinian theory, the present order of the 
organic world has been caused by the action of two laws, 
known as the laws of heredity and of variation. The law 
of heredity is familiarly exemplified by the well-known fact 
that offspring resemble their parents. Not only, however, 
do the offspring belong to the same species as their parents, 
but they inherit the individual peculiarities of their parents. 
It is on this that the breeders of cattle depend, and it is a 
fact of every-day experience amongst ourselves. A further 
point with reference to heredity to which he must call their 
attention was the fact that the characteristics which display 
themselves at some special period in the life of the parent 
are acquired by the offspring at a corresponding period. 
Thus, in many birds the males have a special plumage in . 
the adult state. The male offspring is not, however, born i 
with the adult plumage, but only acquires it when it be- 
comes adult. The law of variation is, in a certain sense, 
opposed to the law of heredity. It asserts that the resem- 
blance which offspring bear to their parents is never exact. 
The contradiction between the two laws is only apparent. 
All variations and modifications in an organism are directly 
or indirectly due to its environments ; that is to say, they 
are rather produced by some direct influence acting upon 
the organism itself, or by some more subtle and mysterious 
action on its parents ; and the law of heredity realty asserts 
that the offspring and parent would resemble each other if 
their environments were the same. Since, however, this is 
never the case, the offspring always differ to some extent 
from the parents. Now, according to the law of heredity, 
every acquired variation tends to be inherited, so that, by a 
summation of small changes, the animals may come to 
differ from their parent stock to an indefinite extent. Mr. 
Balfour then referred to what he spoke of as a con- 
crete example of the application of these two laws, his 
object being to demonstrate how completely modern em- 
bryological naming is dependent on inheritance and varia- 
lion, which constitute the keystones of the Darwinian the- 
ory. He maintained that “ The Origin of Species ” afforded 
explanations of important embryological facts, and added 
that no explanation, for instance, could be offered of the 
fact that a frog in the course of its growth has a stage in 
which it breathes like a fish, and then why it is like a newt 
with a long tail, which gradually becomes absorbed, and 
finally disappears. To the Darwinian the explanation of 
such facts is obvious. The stage when the tadpole breathes 
by gills is a repetition of the stage when the ancestors of 
the frog had not advanced in the scale of development be- 
yond a fish, while the newt-like stage implies that the ances- 
tors of the frog were at one time organized very much like 
the newts of to-day. The explanation of such facts has 
opened out to the embryologist quite a new series of prob- 
lems. Having examined these in regard to phytogeny and 
organogeny, and entering into elaborate scientific details 
and arguments, Mr. Balfour concluded by remarking that 
although the present state of our knowledge on the genesis 
of the nervous system is a great advance on that of a few 
years ago, there is still much remaining to be done to make 
it complete. The subject, he urged, was well worth the at- 
tention of the morphologist, the physiologist, or even the 
psychologist, and we must not remain satisfied by filling up 
the gaps in our knowledge by such hypotheses as he had 
been compelled to frame. New methods of research will 
probably be required to grapple with the problems that are 
still unsolved; but when we look back and survey what has 
been done in the past, there can be no reason for mistrust- 
ing our advance in the future. 
RELATION OF VERMONT ARCHAEOLOGY TO 
THAT OF THE ADJACENT STATES.* 
By Dr. George H. Perkins. 
Vermont is a very barren region archaeologically as com- 
pared with many parts of the West, yet thorough inves- 
tigation has shown that even there interesting results may 
be obtained. We not only have found a not inconsiderable 
number of stone relics, but we have also found, as we think, 
an interesting relation between these specimens and those 
from surrounding States. West of the Green Mountains 
we find our greatest variety of objects, and we find at least 
two classes, and perhaps more, which should be referred to 
different people. Here and there, but especially near 
Lake Champlain, we find objects of copper, and polished 
stone much more skillfully made than most of the speci- 
mens found in New England. In certain graves found 
near Swanton, and described fully at the Portland meeting 
of this Association, we find this class of objects. A peculiar 
form of slate knife (or lance?), polished and with 
notched haft, is found in Western Vermont, but oc- 
curs in greater abundance across the lake in New York and 
in Central New York. At Palatine Bridge Mr. S. L. 
Frey has discovered graves of the same kind as those 
found at Swanton. Taking these finer specimens of ancient 
workmanship as a basis of comparison, leaving out of ac- 
count the ruder stone objects and the pottery, we can 
duplicate most of our Vermont specimens in Central New 
York, and also we find from Western New York and the 
mounds of Ohio many which are identical in all essential 
characters. This is true of shell and copper beads, of cop- 
per spear-heads, of stone tubes, axes, gorgets, banner stones 
and other objects. As we go westward we find these spec- 
imens increasing in number and of greater variety, and we 
also find a few forms absent. These specimens seem 
to me sufficiently characteristic and numerous to warrant 
the inference that in them we have a record of a people who 
emigrated from Ohio through New York, crossed Lake 
Champlain and reached as far east as the Green Mountains, 
where they stopped. They also appear not to have reached 
further north than Northern Vermont, nor further south 
than the southern end of Lake Champlain. 
The other class of relics is composed of ruder objects 
associated with pottery. So far as I know no pottery has 
been found with the first class of relics. This pottery is 
quite unlike that from the mounds or most of that found 
* Read before the A. A. A. S., Boston, 1880. 
