laogal imtimion of ©reat 33ritain. 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 

 Friday, March 13, 1857. 



SiE Roderick I. Murchison, G.C.S. F.R.S. Vice-President, 

 in the Chair. 



Pbofessor John Phillips, M.A. F.R.S. F.G.S. 



READEK IN OEOLOOT IN THB CNIVJEBSITT OF OXBOSD, 



On the Malvern Hills, 



Eighteen hundred years have passed away since one of the greatest 

 of the Roman soldiers stood on the brow of the Cotteswold hills, and 

 gazed with longing eyes across the vale of Severn to the distant 

 mountains which formed the last defence of Britain. Full in front 

 rose the rocky chain of Malvern, crested with war camps, and 

 defended by Caractacus. Little thought the contending warriors 

 that in another age chiefs of a milder mood, wielding very different 

 weapons, should bring into subjection that unexplored region, and 

 make the names of Murchison and Sedgwick as famous as ever 

 were those of Ostorius and Caractacus. And little thought the 

 philosophic historian, who records the captivity of the Silurian 

 chief, that the poor province of Britain which struggled so hard for 

 liberty, should in another day become a kingdom of science, with a 

 sway extending far beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire, and 

 archives stretching back beyond the building of Rome and the 

 origin of nations, to the early days of creation and the beginning 

 of life upon the globe. 



As plainly as the Annals of Tacitus preserve for us the steps of 

 the Silurian war, so clearly the Silurian strata mark successive 

 stages in the construction of the earth. The earth has records, 

 history, and chronology. When, amidst the broken walls of some 

 ruined abbey, we judge of the age of its various parts by the form 

 of the arch and the mouldings of the windows, or examine trees 

 rooted in Saxon soil before the advent of the Norman conqueror, 

 and determine their date by counting the rings of annual growth, 

 the process we employ is like that which is in every day use by the 

 geologist. Antiquaries 'of a new order, as Cuvier justly describes 

 himself, we learn to restore by a mental effort the long past events 

 of nature, to collect and place in their true order the fragments of 

 Vol. II.— (No. 25.) 2 e 



