242 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. . 



j 



Succession of Strata. Prof. Ramsay in the anniversary address 

 1863, before the British Geological Society, adduced evidence to 

 show that the epochs in the palaeozoic formations not stratigraphicajly 

 represented in the British Islands were of longer duration than those 

 which are so represented. From these premises, the professor argued 

 that the apparent breaks in the succession of living forms were to be 

 accounted for by the incompleteness of the record, and not by theories 

 of violent destructions and new creations, which were not borne out by 

 known facts. Nor was it just to assume that we saw the dawn of life 

 in the earliest British strata, especially as older corals have been dis- 

 covered in Canada. 



Prof. Ramsay likewise adverted to the question of whether similar 

 formations in distant countries were contemporaneous, and stated his 

 opinion that in many cases the length of time occupied in the disposi- 

 tion of palaeozoic strata was so enormous as to have rendered a very 

 wide migration of species possible, and to make it probable that simi- 

 larity of organic remains indicated an approximation of date. 



New Views Respecting Stratification. Certain French geologists 

 are trying to account for the arrangement of geological strata by refer- 

 ring it either to the earth's annual revolution or daily rotation. In 

 one or the other of these movements, they find an explanation of cer- 

 tain phenomena of stratification which are not easy to explain on any 

 other known theory, among which are the appearances of stratification 

 observable in embankments when cut through a few years after their 

 formation. 



Submergence of the British Islands during the Drift Period. 

 At the British Association, 1863, Sir C. Lyell, referring to certain 

 shells which had been found in Wales, said it was proved to demonstra- 

 tion that the whole of Snowdonia, the highest mountains in Wales, 

 were islands at the time the shells existed. The changes that must 

 have taken place in the earth's crust to produce this permanent up- 

 heaval were really most astonishing ; and it was proved how the study 

 of the living species of shells, which Mr. Jeffreys had so successfully 

 cultivated, opened up wonderful geological inferences in regard to the 

 changes that had taken place in the earth in modern times. 



The Divisions of the Tertiary System. At a recent meeting of the 

 Boston Society of Natural History, Prof. Agassiz gave an account of 

 the conclusions at which he had arrived by the study of tertiary fos- 

 sils in reference to the division of the strata in which they occur. He 

 was satisfied that the primary divisions given by Lyell were natural, 

 although the subdivisions are much more numerous, and the basis 

 upon which the larger groups had been founded was erroneous ; the 

 relations of one group of beds to another being correctly based upon a 

 percentage of species, representative of, rather than identical with, 

 those now living. He was further satisfied that the principles upon 

 which fossiliferous deposits of distant regions had been synchronized, 

 namely, by the similarity of their organic forms, was entirely erroneous, 

 since such fossils, even when unquestionably contemporaneous, showed 

 frequently, when compared together, greater differences than the fos- 

 sils from successive horizons in the same country. 



The Tertiary Shells and Corals of Jamaica. At a recent meet- 

 ing of the British Geological Society, Mr. J. C. Moore communicated 



