PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9 



A similar condition of things occurs among the Tertiary 

 deposits along the southern base of the Himalayas in India, in 

 what are known as the Sivvalik beds. These beds contain a 

 mammalian fauna which European paleontologists have unhesi- 

 tatingly referred to the Miocene ; but the geologists of the 

 Indian survey have shown that they have many thousand feet of 

 Miocene strata beneath them ; and upon other grounds, also, they 

 show that they cannot be of earlier age than the Pliocene. 



Perhaps one of the most remarkable instances of the apparent 

 reversion of the chronological order of the formations, as it is 

 known in Europe, occurs in the great series of strata in India 

 which is known as the Gondwana System. Mr. Blanford, in 

 his address, gives an account of this remarkable case in detail. 

 Certain of the beds of this system of formations contain a fauna 

 which paleontologists agree in classifying as Triassic. These 

 Triassic beds are found overlying beds which contain a RhaBtic 

 flora, or one which has its homotaxial representative in Europe 

 between the Jurassic and Triassic ; and these Rhaetic beds are 

 found to overlie those which contain a flora that paleobotanists 

 refer with confidence to the Jurassic period. In the other cases 

 mentioned, there is a reversion of two homotaxial epochs ; but in 

 this Gondwana System the reversion embraces three of them. 

 That is, the order of all the three is reversed, so that the 

 ascending order in India is the same as the descending order in 

 Europe. 



Again, it has been shown by experienced geologists that in 

 Australia there are beds which bear a flora that paleobotanists 

 declare to be typically Jurassic, and which are interstratified with 

 marine beds that bear an abundance of characteristic Lower 

 Carboniferous molluscan species. And, furthermore, that these 

 beds are overlaid by a fresh-water formation which has been 

 referred with confidence to the Permian period. 



Coining to our own country, the most remarkable case of the 

 reversion of the order in which the faunal and floral types are 



