The President's Address. 101
Arctic animals. I hope to have an opportunity of enlarging
upon this subject on some future occasion.
Our Field Meetings cannot but have left pleasant memories
with us all. In spite of unfavourable weather on many
occasions, they have always been well attended, and their
success is largely due to the efforts of the eminent gentle-
men who have acted as our conductors. The best thanks
of the Club are due to Sir Antonio Brady, Professor
Boulger, Dr. M. C. Cooke, Major-General Pitt-Rivers, Mr.
B. H. Cowper, Mr. D'Oyley, Mr. Worthington Smith, and
Mr. Henry Walker ; whilst upon our Honorary Secretary
has not only devolved the organization of these meetings,
but likewise the preparation of those excellent reports
which have appeared in the Woodford Times, and which we
shall many of us peruse with the interest of personal
experience as now published in our "Proceedings." Among
the most memorable of these excursions was the visit to
Ilford in July, under the leadership of Sir Antonio Brady
and Mr. Henry Walker, on which occasion most interest-
ing collections of flint implements and other objects of
Palaeolithic and Neolithic age were exhibited by Sir
Antonio Brady and Mr. Worthington Smith ; and Mr. A. R.
Wallace favoured us with a brief sketch of his views on the
great question of geological climate which have recently
appeared fully elaborated in his admirable "Island Life."
It would be quite out of place to attempt here to lay before
you any of the lines of argument adopted by Mr. Wallace
in support of his theory, but it will be instructive, as show-
ing the rapidity of the onward march of science, if I just
mention one of his main conclusions, in so far as it bears
upon a statement made in my inaugural address delivered
last February. In speaking of the glacial epoch (i.e., the
last glacial period, with its alternations of warm periods), I
stated that the causes of these wonderful conditions of
climate were of an astronomical nature, thereby of course
indicating the occurrence of winter in aphelion (brought
about by the precession of the equinoxes) during a period
of great excentricity of the earth's orbit. This theory,
due to Dr. Croll, has long been held by our most eminent