SECOND ORDINARY MEETING.

ROYAL INSTITUTION, October 29th, 1860.

The REV. H. H. HIGGINS, M.A., PRESIDENT, in the Chair.

The following Gentlemen were ballotted for, and elected Members of the Society :

REV. W. BANISTER, B.A.,

DAVID WALKER, M.D., F.R.G.S.,

(late Surgeon to the "Fox," Arctic exploring vessel,)

and Mr. FREDERICK KIRBY.

The PRESIDENT announced that he intended arranging a series of working botanical excursions, in connexion with the Naturalists' Field Club, on Saturday afternoons, when the weather was favourable. A beginning was made on the previous Saturday, when a dozen ladies and gentlemen had accompanied him to Rock Ferry.

Dr. COLLINGWOOD, being called upon for the additions made to the local Fauna during the past year, said, that although much had been learnt, the results obtained were rather of a negative than of a positive character. He had been requested by the British Association, at its last meeting at Oxford, to dredge in the rivers Mersey and Dee, for the purpose of perfecting, as far as possible, our knowledge of those rivers; and with that view he had made three or four excursions during the summer on both rivers. He had not, however, to announce a large addition to the number of specific forms found in them, but had accumulated much information with

regard to the distribution and numbers of certain species. Among other results, he had satisfied himself that the common Doris aspera has not yet been found on these shores, while on the other hand, its allied species, D. proxima, though no hitherto found elsewhere, is here everywhere common. It was this group of naked-gilled Mollusca which had perhaps been most studied; and two species had been added to the list namely, Eolis exigua, which he had found at Egremont, and E. olivacea, brought by Dr. Edwards from Hilbre Island on the occasion of the Field Naturalists' excursion there; on which occasion, also, a new compound Ascidian, Clavellina lepadiformis, had rewarded the search. Pilumnus hirtellus a species of crab, he had found upon the Egremont shore; and it had since been met with by Mr. Moore at Hilbre. Among the fresh-water Polyzoa some discoveries had also been made, viz., Lophopus crystallinus, found by Dr. Edwards in a ditch at Oxton; and Plumatella repens, brought by Mr. Moore from Raby. The small number of absolute additions made to the Fauna from year to year he regarded as a strong proof of the excellence and accuracy of the Fauna list prepared by Mr. Byerley, and published by the Society in 1854.

Dr. WALKER exhibited the egg of the little Auk (Alca alle) taken by himself in latitude 764 N. Also a specimen of Anorthite, a mineral new to the British isles, and consisting of silica, alumina and lime, with traces of magnesia and oxide of iron. It was from Ireland.

Mr. DUCKWORTH exhibited a bow and arrows of the Veddahs of Ceylon.

Dr. COLLINGWOOD read a letter he had received from Professor Krauss, Director of the Zoological Department of the Royal Museum at Stuttgart, requesting him, if possible, to cause some marine Invertebrata from the British seas to be sent to the latter in exchange for other objects. Dr. Collingwood referred the subject to the keepers of the Free Public and

Royal Institution Museums, and pointed out a means by which

they might possibly be preserved sufficiently for scientific purposes.

A paper was then read, of which the following is an abstract:

BY THE REV. H. H. HIGGINS, M.A., PRESIDENT.

Mr. HIGGINS, in his introductory remarks, stated that it had been his intention to submit to the society an original paper on Mr. Darwin's book; but on reflecting that such a course would lead only to the addition of another review to the numbers which had already appeared, treating the subject more fully and more ably than he himself could hope to do, he had resolved to found his observations on the criticisms contained in the various serials in which Mr. Darwin's work had been reviewed. Some of the best of these he had not yet had time to examine; his remarks would, therefore, necessarily be very incomplete.

He considered the paper by M. Agassiz, inserted in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, to be quite unworthy of so distinguished a naturalist. Having entered at some length into his reasons for holding this opinion, he said :— A singular argument is used by M. Agassiz to show that affinities between animals are not evidences of genealogical relationship. Similarity, he argues, between adult animals, is but an agreement in a single stage, and, if agreement in a single stage be sufficient to prove genealogical relationship, then, since the embryos of very distinct animals are much alike, there must be close relationship between these very distinct animals; a

reductio ad absurdum. M. Agassiz thus writes:-" A young snake resembles a young turtle or a young bird more than any two species of snakes resemble one another, and yet they go on reproducing their kinds, and nothing but their kinds; so that no degree of affinity, however close, can in the present state of our science, be urged as exhibiting any evidence of community of descent." A child might reply, if a young snake is more like a young bird than one old snake is like another, a young snake is not so like a young bird as it is to another young snake; so affinity, after all, is right in its indications. But this would be to concede to M. Agassiz far too much. Does an embryo snake resemble an embryo bird more than two kinds of snakes resemble each other? Differences of embryos must surely be compared amongst themselves, and not with the distinctions subsisting between adults.

M. Agassiz suggests:-"Would the supporters of the fanciful theories, lately propounded, only extend their studies a little beyond the range of domesticated animals; would they investigate the alternate generation of the Acalephs, the extraordinary modes of development of the Helminth, the reproduction of the Salpæ, &c., they would soon learn that there are in the world far more astonishing phenomena, strictly circumscribed between the limits of unvarying species, than the slight differences produced by the intervention of man amongst domesticated animals, and perhaps cease to be so confident as they seem to be, that these differences are trustworthy indications of the variability of species." It is, no doubt, desirable that Mr. Darwin and his supporters should not remain in ignorance of the "astonishing phenomena" connected with the transformations of the Salpæ, Medusæ, &c., though it is not clear why these changes should be more astonishing, except to those to whom they may be novelties, than the transformations undergone by insects; but, in the matter of the argument, the illustration given by M. Agassiz

is altogether wide of the mark, for the simple reason that the transformations of the Medusæ are not varieties at all, any more than the caterpillar is a variety of the butterfly. *

Mr. Higgins then quoted some passages from a paper in the National Review, in defence of Mr. Darwin's theory. He also gave an outline of an article by Mr. W. Hopkins in Fraser's Magazine, for June and July, 1860, which he thought to be, on the whole, the best and most philosophical review of the subject he had seen. The following is an extract from it:-"At what period of his progressive improvement did man acquire the spiritual part of his being, endowed with the awful attribute of immortality? Was it an accidental variety seized upon by the power of natural selection and made permanent? Is the step from the finite to the infinite to be regarded as one of the indefinitely small steps in man's continuous progress of development, and effected by the operation of ordinary natural causes? We can scarcely suggest these questions without an apprehension of their being deemed irre

Since writing the above, I have had the advantage of hearing Dr. Collingwood read an able and interesting paper in defence of M. Agassiz' criticism. On further consideration, my first impressions are, however, confirmed. The greater the eminence of the writer, the more deeply it is to be regretted that he should adopt the tone of M. Agassiz, who thus characterizes Mr. Darwin's work :"Instead of facts, we are treated with marvellous bear, cuckoo, and other stories. Credat Judæus Apella!" No mere vulgar raillery could be half so offensive as the following:-"I apprehend that the meaning of the words he (Mr. Darwin) uses has misled him into the belief that he had found the clue to phenomena, which he does not even seem correctly to understand." The charge of materialism against Mr. Darwin's work I have elsewhere attempted to meet. Such an assertion as "the powers to which Darwin refers the origin of species can design nothing," was not to be expected from M. Agassiz. Whatever, on any physiological hypothesis, may be the differences or resemblances subsisting between embryos, to say that adults differ more than embryos, and to attempt to found on this observation a scientific proposition, appears to me to be as unphilosophical as anything that can well be conceived. The transformation of Acalephs are not, it is true, strictly analogous with those of insects, because the transformations of the former animals are complicated with the process of reproduction by division, peculiar to lowest forms of life. In both insects and Acalephs, however, the transformations are strictly confined to a limited cycle, and such transformations have, therefore, not even the remotest analogy with the "variations" of which Mr. Darwin writes. I do not pass on to notice other points, because it was not my object in writing to censure M. Agassiz' criticism, but only to express an opinion on his and other reviews of Mr. Darwin's theory. H. H. H.