318 Professor Edward Forbes on the Light thrown on 



towards G, and make angle E B H = E A G. Then the two angles 

 G C B, C B H will exceed 180^ by whatever the three angles of the tri- 

 angle ABC fall short of 180° ; and, consequently, after the finite area 

 ABC has been taken from the infinite E A G, instead of the remainder 

 E B C G being still equal to or less than area E A G, it will exceed 

 area E B H = E A G, by more than the infinite area of an angle H B I 

 equal to the defect of the three angles of A B C from 180°. 



This absurdity, while it shews the fallacy of the direct reasoning, 

 would amount, as in the former case, to an indirect proof that the angles 

 of a triangle cannot be less than 180', were it not that the reasoning 

 still involves infinite quantities, which we have just seen are apt to mis- 

 lead the greatest of geometers. 



On the Light thrown on Geology by Submarine Besearches ; 

 being the Substance of a Communication made to the Boyal 

 Institution of Great Britain, Friday Evening, the 2Sd Febru- 

 ary 1844. By Edward Forbes, F.L.S., M.W.S., &c. Prof. 

 Bot. King's College, London. Communicated by the 

 Author. 



About the middle of the last century, certain Italian natu- 

 ralists* sought to explain the arrangement and disposition of 

 organic remains in the strata of their country, by an ex- 

 amination of the distribution of living beings on the bed of 

 the Adriatic Sea. They sought in the bed of the present 

 sea for an explanation of the phenomena presented by the 

 upheaved beds of former seas. The instrument, by means of 

 which they conducted their researches, was the common 

 dyster-dredge. The results they obtained bore importantly 

 on Geology ; but since their time, little has been done in the 

 same line of research, — the geologist has been fully occupied 

 above water, and the naturalist has pursued his studies with 

 far too little reference to their bearing on geological ques- 

 tions, and on the history of animals and plants in time. The 

 dredge, when used, has been almost entirely restricted to the 

 search after rare animals, by the more adventurous among 

 zoologists. 



Convinced that inquiries of the kind referred to, if con- 

 ducted with equal reference to all the natural history sciences, 



* Marsili and Donati, and after them Soldani, 



