*.] GEOLOGICAL CONTEMPORANEITY. 205 



wonder that correspondence in succession came to he 

 looked upon as correspondence in age, or " contem- 

 poraneity." And, indeed, so long as relative age only 

 is spoken of, correspondence in succession is correspon- 

 dence in age ; it is relative contemporaneity. 



But it would have been very much better for geology 

 if so loose and ambiguous a word as " contemporaneous ;: 

 had been excluded from her terminology, and if, in its 

 stead, some term expressing similarity of serial relation, 

 and excluding the notion of time altogether, had been 

 employed to denote correspondence in position in two 

 or more series of strata. 



In anatomy, where such correspondence of position 

 has constantly to be spoken of, it is denoted by the 

 word " homology " and its derivatives ; and for Geology 

 (which after all is only the anatomy and physiology 

 of the earth) it might be well to invent some single 

 word, such as " homotaxis " (similarity of order), in 

 order to express an essentially similar idea. This, how- 

 ever, has not been done, and most probably the inquiry 

 will at once be made — To what end burden science with 

 a new and strange term in place of one old, familiar, 

 and part of our common language ? 



The reply to this question will become obvious as 

 the inquiry into the results of palaeontology is pushed 

 further. 



Those whose business it is to acquaint themselves 

 specially with the works of palaeontologists, in fact, 

 will be fully aware that very few, if any, would rest 

 satisfied with such a statement of the conclusions of 

 their branch of biology as that which has just been 

 given. 



Our standard repertories of palaeontology profess to 

 teach us far higher things — to disclose the entire sue- 

 10 



