8 Anniversary Address of the 



I have dwelt thus at length on the age of the nummulitic 

 series, because its recognition as a tertiary deposit draws 

 with it consequences of the utmost theoretical importance, 

 and is singularly confirmatory of a remark made by M. Des- 

 noyers many years ago in his address to the French Geolo- 

 gical Society, namely, " that the more the Alps are studied 

 the younger they grow." This saying was elicited by the 

 admission by competent observers, that certain schistose 

 rocks of great thickness, containing dark writing slates, ori- 

 ginally classed as " transition formations" by some of the 

 followers of Werner, and regarded as of palseozoic age, were 

 really secondary. Now we are called upon to go much 

 further; for these same strata belong to the flysch, and 

 therefore constitute what is by no means the base of the 

 eocene system. To the English geologist who is old enough 

 to remember when all the soft clays and loose sands over- 

 lying the chalk, some of them containing shells of species 

 identical with those now living, were looked upon as very 

 modern, and as the creations of yesterday, in comparison 

 with the rocks of the higher Alps, it may well appear a 

 startling proposition to learn that the clay of London was in 

 the course of accumulation as marine mud at a time when 

 the ocean still rolled its waves over the space now occupied 

 by some of the loftiest Alpine summits. It will follow, 

 moreover, as a corollary from the same date, as before 

 hinted, that not only the upheaval of the Alps, but all the 

 principal internal movements, dislocations, inversions, and 

 contortions of the strata, are subsequent to the origin of the 

 nummulitic deposits, and had not therefore even commenced 

 till great numbers of the eocene vertebrate and invertebrate 

 animals had lived and died in succession. 



If the development of so vast an aggregate amount of 

 dynamical agency in times so modern in the earth's history 

 had been confined to a single narrow zone of mountains, it 

 would be a fact of no small significance as invalidating all 

 theories which ascribe such magnificent displays of me- 

 chanical force to very remote epochs. But on extending our 

 survey, we find some of the members of this nummulitic 

 series, with their characteristic fossils, playing the same 



