Transactions of The Royal Society of Canada 



SECTION IV 



Series III MAY, 1922 Vol. XVI 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 

 By W. A. Parks. Ph.D., F.R.S.C. 



The Development of Stratigraphie Geology and Palaeontology in Canada 



(Read May Meeting, 1922) 



L'Abbé Jean Etienne Guettard (1715-1786) was one of the first 

 to abandon the theories of the cosmologists, to abstain from speculation 

 and to found geological conclusions on the secure basis of observed 

 facts. He recognized that the strata of the earth are the documents 

 of its history and planted the first seeds of geology as an historical 

 science. This remarkable man was the first Canadian geologist, for 

 it is recorded that he made an examination of a collection of fossils 

 from Canada in 1752 and on the evidence thus secured attempted to 

 make a subdivision of the rocks of the New World. 



The seeds planted by Guettard were long in germinating, but 

 they bore fruit about the year 1790. The three decades following 

 that date have been called by Zittel the "Heroic Age in Geology." 

 During this thirty years the new ideas crystallized, speculation was 

 discountenanced, fossils assumed an historical importance, and the 

 actual determination of the sequence and subdivisions of strata 

 replaced the previously popular "Theories of the Earth." 



During this period arose modern stratigraphie geology with the 

 distinct recognition of the value of fossils as time-markers. The 

 contemporaneous labour of William Smith in England and of Cuvier 

 and Brongniart in France laid the foundation of Historical Geology 

 and has led to the recognition of these men as the fathers of the science. 

 Smith's famous map of England was published in 1815 and his scanty 

 publications continued to 1820, the close of the Heroic Age. 



This period of struggle between the old and the new ideas was 

 not a time of complete victory for the latter. Imagination did not 

 yield entirely to deductions from observed fact. Theories of the 

 Earth still appeared and even the great Cuvier's Catastrophai Theory 

 betrays the dominating influence of the older literature. 



The older tendencies were apparent, also, in generalization from 

 insufficient data: the outstanding e.xample of this is Werner's nep- 



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