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The Professor then went on to describe the various strata on the west of the 

 Malvern Hills from the lowest point where life was absent — then its first appearing, 

 taking his hearers up through the prolific Silurian bed, where a very large develop- 

 ment of life had taken place. The remains of fishes were found for the first time 

 about half way up that bed. But when they came to the next formation— the Old 

 Red Sandstone — there was a total change of deposits. Very few traces of life 

 appeared there, and even those appeared to have been drifted. Although the 

 Old Red was many thousand feet in thickness, it contained but about a dozen 

 specimens of life, and those embraced a few fishes which totally differed from the 

 strata both above and below it. Some attributed these changes to great con- 

 vulsions, but he was not inclined to that theory when he compared the inclinations 

 of ancient strata with those of the more modern. There had been, no doubt, 

 phenomena effecting these changes in physical condition which formed the 

 present problem in geology. Some believed the earth had undergone a general 

 change in the quality of its atmosphere ; but though there was reason to believe 

 this, yet it would not account for the whole of the phenomena presented. 



He alluded to the astonishing masses of coal in the crust of the earth as 

 a proof of the ancient existence of a wonderful vegetation. Plants lived on air. 

 which gave them their sohd substances ; they extracted carbonic acid from the 

 air, fixed it as carbon, and ultimately become coal. Hence the atmosphere must 

 have become considerably modified by such an immense abstraction, and vegeta- 

 tion itself dwindled as the means from which it derived nutrition became less 

 and less. This carbonic acid was essential to plants, but unfavourable to animals 

 which breathed the air directly. Therefore no such air-breathing animals were 

 found older than the coal formations, excepting one description of lizard in the 

 Old Red of Scotland, a little land shell, and one or two other specimens. 



The Professor went on to explode the theory of those imaginative naturjJists 

 who affirmed that all the species of living things were capable of gradual changes, 

 whereby they passed into other forms, and that geological strata exhibited a 

 series of these easy and gradual changes from the oldest times till now. We 

 might start with a shell, the inhabitants of which m the course of ages would 

 aspire to the class of fishes, and not content with that, would go on to a bird, and 

 ultimately join the mammalia tribes — and so an oyster might become a man. 

 Given a form of Ufe out of which anything might come, and of course everything 

 might come. (Hear hear). But there was no basis for that absurd theory. 

 Had anything changed its form withhi the period of man's existence or know- 

 ledge of the earth ' Sepulchred in Egyptian soil was found the mummied Ibis 

 as it was 3,000 or 4,000 years ago, and the Crocodile of those days agreed with 

 its modern representative on the banks of the NUe. Nothing, indeed, within our 

 experience, justified the suspicion that even plants changed their forms ; nor, 

 in fact, that any one specific form of hfe ever varied so as to represent others. 



The lecturer then returned to the Malvern HUls, to show how they illustrated 

 the succession of life, and particularly alluded to a description of Black Shales 

 found on a part of those hills, which some had mistaken for coal. He had in- 



