1865.] BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 347 



ADDRESS TO THE GEOLOGICAL SECTION 



BY SIR RODERICK MURCHISON, K. C. B. 



It is now nineteen years since I presided over the British As- 

 sociation; and fifteen years have elapsed since I occupied the 

 geological chair ; for, although I have not in the meantime ceased 

 to use my hammer, and though I still cling as keenly as ever to 

 this my own special science, I have, in what I consider its en- 

 larged sense, been led to endeavor to advance, in late years, by 

 every means in my power, the sister science of Geography. I have 

 thus had the happiness to see that, whilst the comparatively new 

 Section of Geography and Ethnology has become very popular, 

 and is always crowded, at all our recent meetings Section C treat- 

 ing, as it does, of the true foundation of geography, has been quite 

 as well attended as ever ; and I trust that on this occasion our 

 room will be as well filled as it has ever been in previous years, 

 when this section was presided over by a Buckland, a Sedgwick, a 

 Delabeche, a Lyell, and a Phillips. 



Great indeed have been the advances made in geological 

 science in the sixteen years which have elapsed since our last 

 meeting in Birmingham. For although at that time the bases of the 

 classification of the older rocks were then firmly established, still 

 our knowledge of the correlations and contents of the several for- 

 mations ascending from the oldest stratified rocks in which we 

 could distinguish the remains of life has since been materially ex- 

 tended. 



The lowest sedimentary rock, which, with most geologists, I 

 considered to be azoic, or void of life, simply because at that time 

 nothing organic had been discovered in them, have, through the 

 labors and discoveries of Sir William Logan and his associates in 

 Canada been found to contain a zoophyte, which they termed Eozoon 

 Canadense. But the rocks containing this fossil were named 

 Laurentian by Logan long before that fossil was detected in them, 

 and simply because they clearly underlie all the rocks of Cambrian 

 and Silurian age. On the same principle of infraposition, it was 

 my good fortune to be able, in 1855, to point out the existence of 

 these same ancient rocks on a large scale in the north-west High- 

 lands of Scotland ; ancf though I at first termed them Fundamen- 

 tal Gneiss, as soon as I heard of Logan's discovery in North 

 America I adopted his name of Laurentian. 



In our islands, however, nothing organic has been discovered as 



