president’s ADDRESS — SECTION D. 
119 
systematise, the morphologist, and the student of embryology ; while 
I doubt not that the study of our cryptozoic fauna will in the future 
throw much light on the difficult problems of geographical distribu- 
tion and variation. The student of variation would find in the Land 
Planarians especially a most profitable field for investigation, and one 
which it would be hard to beat in any other group of animals. 
But one fact must not bo lost sight of, and that is that the oppor- 
tunities which we now enjoy will not be always with us. Not only 
will the agency of man result in greatly confusing the problems of 
geographical distribution, but our cryptozoic fauna must be largely 
exterminated in the near future by the wholesale destruction of forests 
which is now going on. At present this clearing process is to a large 
extent an advantage to the collector, for experience has shown me that 
it is far easier to find cryptozoic animals in parti ally- cl eared localities, 
where they are collected together under the remaining fallen logs, than in 
virgin forest, where there is so much cover that the animals are widely 
scattered, and the search becomes very laborious. 'When the clearing 
process is complete, however, and the last logs have disappeared from 
the ground in auy district, then we may expect to lose sight for ever of 
many peculiar forms which formerly dwelt there. 
