No. 1.] ANNUAL ADDRESS. 5 



This testimony is tlie more valuable, inasmuch as the annulose 

 animals generally, and the Trilobites in particular, have recently 

 been a favorite field for the speculations of our Englisli evolu- 

 tionists. The usual argumentum ad ignorantiam deduced from 

 the imperfection of the geological record, will not avail against 

 the facts cited by Barrande. unless it could be proved that we 

 know the Trilobites only in the last stages of their decadence 

 and that they existed as long before the Primordial, as this is 

 before the Permian. Even this supposition, extravagent as it 

 appears, would by no means remove all the difficulties. 



Leaving this subject, we mav turn for a little to the growth of 

 our knowledi^-e of the older faunas of the earth. A few years 

 ago, when the last edition of Dana's Manual was published, the 

 Potsdam Sandstone formed the base of the Palasozoic series in 

 America, though Barrande in Bohemia and Salter and Hicks in 

 Wales had disclosed lower horizons of life in those regions: now, 

 in America, Palaeozoic life descends almost if not quite as low as 

 that of Europe. The researches of Mr. Murray in Newfound- 

 land, together with the study of the fossils by Mr. Billings, have 

 revealed a lower Potsdam, while Messrs Hartt and Matthew by 

 their praiseworthy explorations of the rich primordial fauna of 

 St. John, have enabled us to establish the "Acadian Group " on 

 the horizon of the loAver slate group of Jukes in Newfoundland, of 

 the gold-bearing rocks of Nova Scotia, and of the slates of Brain- 

 tree in Massachusetts.^ Mr. Billino*s, I have reason to believe, will 

 shortly be able to lead us to still greater depths, and as he indi- 

 cated at a recent meeting of this Society, to introduce us to the 

 fossils of Sir William Logan's Huronian group. It is thus clear 

 that the student of American geology has to add a new or rather 

 very old chapter to his studies of the older rock formations. In 

 connection with this subject. Dr. Sterry Hunt has raised some 

 new and startling questions as to the class,ification of all the old 

 Metamorphic rocks of Eastern America, and has excited not a 

 little of that controversy, which, like competition in trade, is the 

 life of scientific progress. Dr. Hunt naturally attaches a very 

 great importance to the mineral character of the more crystalline 

 sediments ; and in regions where fossils are wanting, and 

 stratigraphy is obscure, he does well to claim precedence for his 

 own special department of chemical geology ; though those of us 

 who have been accustomed to regard mineral character, as an un- 



* Menevian of Salter, Etage D of Barrande. 



