262 NATURAL SCIENCE [April 



Secondly, when we travel beyond the Forest Bed it seems to 

 me as plain as can be that we have a real gap and a real 

 hiatus that points in these latitudes, whatever may have 

 been the case elsewhere, to some very important change in the 

 fauna and the flora of the land. For Britain, therefore, whatever 

 may be the case elsewhere, we must claim that a very natural and 

 logical geological epoch or period is constituted by the series of beds, 

 commencing with the base of the Forest Bed and coming down to 

 the handiwork of tide and river, rain and frost at this moment, 

 and that this forms a very natural substantive and independent 

 division, or series of our beds, marking a very distinct period, and 

 that it marks, in fact, the very last one of all in the geological series. 



What name should this period bear ? As we have seen, the 

 various names now current have the double infirmity that their 

 meaning and connotation have l)ecome utterly confused and worth- 

 less, and that they have been applied indifferently to submarine and 

 subaerial beds, which we wish to treat apart. If we are to select a 

 name, it ought to be a name connected with the land and its products, 

 and it seems to me that those names are the best which are taken 

 from some type of animal or plant which marks the particular series 

 both in time and in place. I am not sure that the term Anthropozoic 

 or ' Human period ' has not much to recommend it. 



I, of course, object, as I have said before, altogether to making the 

 mere advent of man a special reason for creating a new geological 

 horizon, as Lyell and others have done, but it happens that this 

 particular series of beds which (in Britain at all events) has a 

 complete solidariU of its own, is also marked by the presence of 

 man and his works all through, and that man is in efi'ect a very 

 good type animal by which to ear-mark the series. If any one can 

 suggest a better name, let us have it by all means. What it is 

 important to secure is the thing itself — viz., a natural and logical 

 nexus of Beds. Names are after all only indices of knowledge, 

 and the best name is that which best discriminates and defines the 

 fact, and which connotes the idea we want to fix with the greatest 

 precision. 



Having suggested a generic name for them, let us next try 

 and consider how we are to divide the long series of deposits in 

 question into sections or groups, and let us try to secure some 

 criterion which is not indefinite, but one which marks real changes 

 and real frontier lines. 



Apart from the shifting and unstable criteria which have led 

 to the confusion in the commonly accepted nomenclature and 

 arrangement of the later Tertiary beds, there is an underlying 

 difficulty of more critical importance — namely, the actual divergence 

 of opinion in explaining the facts. This divergence is very re- 



