PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 108, 3 November 1923, Page 9

PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

James Gossan Evvart, M.D., F.R.S., Regius Professor of Natural History in tho University of Edinburgh, who is to deliver a public lecture at the Dominion Museum on Monday evening, is one of the most famous men of science that have visited INew Zealand. The immense body of scientific work magnificently done thit has been the outcome of his wofk has been of tho greatest. use, not only to men of science but the public generally. - Researches In tho anatomy of the lower animals led on to important economic work in developing- the fisheries of tho world. But the most impressive of his achievements have been in the direction of practical genetics, especially as applied to domesticanimals and farm stock. In the scientific breeding of racehorses, for example, of sheep and cattle, he is one of tho world's first authorities. One of tho most' interesting of tho things that he has demonstrated is that the horse is no excention to tho rule that "every animal tends to climb up its own genealogical tree," for ho ,has shown that tho horse in early development passes through the three-toed stages of early ancestral forms that roamed tho Old World during Eoceno and Miocene times. Professor Ewart is also an authority on the structure and development of hair 2nd feathers, arid the bearing of their structure - upon the use to which' they are put by the lawful grower of them mid by man. Tho lecture on Monday will bo bafovo the Philosophical Society, but the publio will be welcomed.