President's Address. 125 



These old and chaotic periods are not represented in Wiltshire. 

 But we have just what to our perceptions would be the main span 

 from a chaos to a world. From the Lias, in or near to which, I 

 believe, (though not in Wilts but in a neighbouring part of Somer- 

 set) the Mammalian system begins, we rise to the lower Tertiary 

 where dawn the conditions of terrestrial life approaching our own. 

 Our Oolithic, Greensand, and Chalk formations are well developed ; 

 and, though extensively denuded, are much less obscured by the 

 obliteration caused by extensive aqueous action than in the nearest 

 and in some respects the most interesting corresponding formations 

 on the Continent. The tertiary deposits, though existing in the 

 south-east of the county, and probably in this valley, are not, as 

 far as I am aware, of primary importance. The later drift, here 

 and elsewhere, demands peculiar attention, from the search for 

 early works of man connected with it. 



But before we pass on to Man, the highest, and by the accordant 

 voice of geology and Scripture, the latest type of animal life, let 

 me digress for a moment to notice a misconception, which, placing 

 science and Religion at apparent variance, has been, I am convinced 

 needlessly, detrimental to both. All my physiological prepossessions, 

 (whether justly or not I have not science enough to know) are 

 against the Darwinian hypothesis that species is derived from 

 species, until at last we come to the highest. How, if this were the 

 case, hybrids should not be almost the rule in Nature, instead of the 

 rare exception, I cannot imagine. But neither can I feel the 

 slightest anxiety for my faith, if it were proved to me that God's 

 method in the creation of the species had been analagous to His 

 undoubted method in the production of each individual of it ; by 

 gradual development until it became ripe to have breathed into 

 its nostrils the breath of spiritual life. 



Let us not be scared by the fear of so-called dangerous enquiries. 

 Every enquiry indeed is dangerous which is not pursued in humility, 

 and with a single eye to the truth. Every man who in the conceit 

 of being above popular prejudices, and with the conventional cry 

 of the day against what are called conventionalities, is prejudiced 

 against what other men believe, is disabled from the right pursuit 



