It is now eight years since, in the absence of the late Mr. Leonard Homer, who then presided over us, it fell to my lot, as one of the Secretaries of this Society, to draw up the customary Annual Address.  I availed myself of the opportunity to endeavour to “take stock” of that portion of the science of biology which is commonly called “palaeontology,” as it then existed; and, discussing one after another the doctrines held by palaeontologists, I put before you the results of my attempts to sift the well-established from the hypothetical or the doubtful.  Permit me briefly to recall to your minds what those results were:—­

1.  The living population of all parts of the earth’s surface which have yet been examined has undergone a succession of changes which, upon the whole, have been of a slow and gradual character.

2.  When the fossil remains which are the evidences of these successive changes, as they have occurred in any two more or less distant parts of the surface of the earth, are compared, they exhibit a certain broad and general parallelism.  In other words, certain forms of life in one locality occur in the same general order of succession as, or are homotaxial with, similar forms in the other locality.

3.  Homotaxis is not to be held identical with synchronism without independent evidence.  It is possible that similar, or even identical, faunae and florae in two different localities may be of extremely different ages, if the term “age” is used in its proper chronological sense.  I stated that “geographical provinces, or zones, may have been as distinctly marked in the Palaeozoic epoch as at present; and those seemingly sudden appearances of new genera and species, which we ascribe to new creation, may be simple results of migration.”

4.  The opinion that the oldest known fossils are the earliest forms of life has no solid foundation.

5.  If we confine ourselves to positively ascertained facts, the total amount of change in the forms of animal and vegetable life, since the existence of such forms is recorded, is small.  When compared with the lapse of time since the first appearance of these forms, the amount of change is wonderfully small.  Moreover, in each great group of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, there are certain forms which I termed PERSISTENT TYPES, which have remained, with but very little apparent change, from their first appearance to the present time.

6.  In answer to the question “What, then, does an impartial survey of the positively ascertained truths of palaeontology testify in relation to the common doctrines of progressive modification, which suppose that modification to have taken place by a necessary progress from more to less embryonic forms, from more to less generalized types, within, the limits of the period represented by the fossiliferous rocks?” I reply, “It negatives these doctrines; for it either shows us no evidence of such modification, or demonstrates such modification as has occurred to have been very slight; and, as to the nature of that modification, it yields no evidence whatsoever that the earlier members of any long-continued group were more generalized in structure than the later ones.”