550.1 35 



III 



A New Scheme of Geological Arrangement and 



Nomenclature 



Part II 



IN a previous paper (Vol. XI., p. 321) I laid down two propositions 

 which I think will be more considered by the geologists of the 

 future than they have been by the geologists of the past. One is 

 that submarine deposits should be treated separately from subaerial 

 ones, and arranged in sequence in a separate group ; the second is 

 that deposits should not be arranged or studied in the accidental 

 sequence in which they occur in any particular locality, but rather 

 in a series representing the life-pedigree of their fossil contents. 



This does not exhaust the new departures which seem to be 

 heralded by the gloaming light in the geological horizon. I have 

 always felt that in those inquiries which are not strictly empirical, 

 inquiries in wliich history in the wide acceptation of the term has 

 a place, and which deal with the sequence of events as well as with 

 experiment, that the true road begins with what we know most about, 

 namely, to-day, and proceeds through gradually more encumbered 

 and difficult ground into the mists and fogs that circle round the 

 beginning of all things. It has always seemed to me that in 

 studying archaeology, ethnography, comparative linguistics, &c., &c., 

 our real starting-place ought to be to-day, and that our ultimate goal, 

 the terminus ad quod to which we advance, is the primitive fact. 

 This assuredly ought also to be the case with geology. 



What is the use of framing hypotheses about times and condi- 

 tions which are so foreign to our experience that every statement 

 involves a dozen guesses and a tentative conclusion, until we have 

 carefully mapped the intervening landscape ? It will be said 

 that this is mere pompous rhetoric, since Lyell preached the same 

 sermon in better words. I don't think he did. Lyell, no doubt, 

 applied the methods employed by Nature in her current operations 

 to unravel the mysteries of Nature's acts in the past, and he con- 

 verged upon such current methods a great deal of necessary and of 

 useful attention. But he never seems to me to have looked upon 

 the actually present condition of things, the actually living animals 



