300 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



covering gradually, somewhere on the earth's crust, evidences of the miss- 

 ing links. All our experience and knowledge, theoretical and practical, 

 warrant the affirmation, that at every known stage of geological time there 

 were sea and land. Even those who believe in a primeval azoic period 

 will hardly sanction the supposition that there has been any repetition of 

 azoic epochs since the first life-bearing era commenced ; and if so, and if 

 there were always sea and land s ; nce the commencement of the first fos- 

 siliferous formation, we are warranted in assuming that both earth and 

 water had their faunas and floras. All geological experience goes to show- 

 that wherever you have a perfect sequence of formations accumulating in 

 the same mediiim, air or water, as the case may be, there is, if not a con- 

 tinuance of the same specific types, a graduated succession and interlace- 

 ment of types and of the facies of life assemblages, even as on the 

 present surface of the earth the faunas and floras of proximate provinces 

 intermingle more or less specifically, or, if physical barriers prevent the 

 diffusion of species, assume more or less one general facies. This passage, 

 by aspect and type, of one stage in time into another, is but scantily indi- 

 cated at present in the uppermost manifestations of the Palaeozoic life 

 and the lowermost of the Mesozoic. The missing links will sooner or later 

 reward the diligence of the geological explorer." 



ON THE FORMER PROBABLE EXISTENCE OF PALEOZOIC GLACIERS. 



At the British Association, a communication on the above subject was 

 presented by Prof. A. C. Ramsay, F. K. S. The author commenced by 

 stating that the theory, of the internal heat of this planet having within, 

 any of the known geological periods exercised any climatal influence, was 

 gradually beginning to be discredited, and he proposed to show that gla- 

 ciers and icebergs had existed in these latitudes during a part of the Per- 

 mian epoch, and that also, in the secondary period, there were traces of the 

 same actions in some of the beds of the Bunter Sandstone. 



In the Permian rocks of the midland counties of England are thick 

 beds of trapoid breccia, occupying a given geological horizon. They are 

 about 100 and 200 feet thick, according to locality, and consist of pieces of 

 greenstone, felstone porphyry, felstone, felspathic ash, ribbon slate, quartz 

 rock, purple and green sandstone and slate, black slate, Silurian limestone, 

 &c. These are not derived from the rocks immediately underlying, but 

 for the most part can be identified with rocks of the Longmynd, and the 

 Lower Silurian slates and igneous rocks, &c., immediatel) r west of, and 

 accociated with, the Stiper stones. They are enclosed in a hardened paste 

 of red marl, analogous in some respects to the bould-ciay of the Pleisto- 

 cene epochs. Very few of the stones are well rounded by the action of 

 water. They are mostly angular or sub-angular, and have those pecu- 

 liarly flattened surfaces common to fragments found in Moraines. They 

 are frequently well polished, and occasionally scratched. They are of all 

 sizes, up to two feet nine inches in diameter. Had they ever formed sea- 



