THE RECORD OF THE ROCKS 



By Francis Arthur Bather 



Keeper of Geology, British Museum {Natural History) ; President 



Geological Society 



When the celebrated Huxley was near the beginning of 

 his career he was very cautious about accepting eyolution, 

 and, among other wise warnings, he said that he saw no 

 evidence for it in fossils. At that time Huxley had not 

 specially studied fossils or geology. Later in life he was 

 appointed palaeontologist to the Geological Survey of Great 

 Britain, and he then had studied fossils to such good effect 

 that he was elected President of the Geological Society of 

 London. The more he learned about fossils, the more did 

 he change his early opinion, so that in 1881, when he lec- 

 tured to the British Association at York, he was impelled 

 to say: "If the theory of Evolution had not already been 

 put forward, palaeontologists would have had to invent it." 



The great Swiss-American naturalist Louis Agassiz had 

 a more profound knowledge of certain groups of fossils than 

 any other scientific man of his day. He saw that their dis- 

 tribution in the rocks showed a definite succession and fol- 

 lowed certain laws. There was no meaningless scattering — 

 "a tale told by an idiot . . . signifying nothing" — but a history 

 as logical as any that has been written about human affairs. 

 In any group, such as the fishes, which he himself studied, 



[102] 



