282 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



affluence cannot easily imagine how long a time it takes to get the 

 chill of poverty out of one's bones." In like manner, we of the living 

 generation, when called upon to make grants of thousands of centuries 

 in order to explain the events of what is called the modern period, shrink 

 naturally at first from making what seems so lavish an expenditure of 

 past time. Throughout our early education Ave have been accustomed 

 to such strict economy in all that relates to the chronology of the 

 earth and its inhabitants in remote ages, so fettered have we been by 

 old traditional beliefs, that even when our reason is convinced, and we 

 arc persuaded that we ought to make more liberal grants of time to 

 the geologist, we feel how hard it is to get the chill of poverty out of 

 our bones. 



Recent Changes in Geological Opinions. I will now briefly allude, 

 in conclusion, to two points on which a gradual change of opinion has 

 been taking place among geologists of late years. First, as to whether 

 there has been a continuous succession of events in the organic and 

 inorganic worlds, uninterrupted by violent and general catastrophes ; 

 and, secondly, whether clear evidence can be obtained of a period 

 antecedent to the creation of organic beings on the earth. I am old 

 enough to remember when geologists dogmatized on both these 

 questions in a manner very different from that in which they would 

 now venture to indulge. I believe that by far the greater number 

 now incline to opposite views from those which were once most com- 

 monly entertained. On the first point it is worthy of remark that, 

 although a belief in sudden and general convulsions has been losing 

 ground, as also the doctrine of abrupt transitions from one set of 

 species of animals and plants to another of a very different type, yet 

 the whole series of the records which have been handed down to us 

 are now more than ever regarded as fragmentary. They ought to be 

 looked upon as more perfect, because numerous gaps have been filled 

 up, and in the formations newly intercalated in the series we have 

 found many missing links and various intermediate gradations be- 

 tween the nearest allied forms previously known in the animal and 

 vegetable worlds. Yet the whole body of monuments which we are 

 endeavoring to decipher appears more defective than before. For 

 my own part, I agree with Mr. Darwin, in considering them as a mere 

 fraction of those which have once existed, while no approach to a 

 perfect series was ever formed originally, it having never been part 

 of the plan of nature to leave a complete record of all her works and 

 operations for the enlightenment of rational beings who might study 

 them in after ages. 



In reference to the other great question, of the earliest date of 

 vital phenomena on this planet, the late discoveries in Canada have 

 at. least demonstrated that, certain theories founded in Europe on mere 

 negative evidence were altogether delusive. In the course of a geo- 

 logical survey, carried on under the able direction of Sir William E. 

 Logan, it has been shown that northward of the liiver St. Lawrence 

 there is a vast series of stratified and crystalline rocks of gneiss, uiica- 

 schist, quartzite, and limestone, about 40,000 feet in thickness, which 

 have been called Laureiitian. They are more ancient than the oldest 

 fossiliferous strata of Europe, or those to which the term primordial 

 had been rashly aligned. In the iirst place, the newest part of this 



