[FOR THE USE OF MEMBERS. | 
Royal Justitution of Great Hritatn. 
1851. 
WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 
Friday, March 7. 
Tue Duxre or NortHuMBERLAND, President, in the Chair. 
Sir Rovericx Impry Murcuison, V.P.R.S. 
On the former Changes of the Alps. 
Tue complicated structure of the Alps so baffled the penetration of 
De Saussure, that after a Jife of toil the first great historian of those 
mountains declared ‘‘ there was nothing constant in them except 
their variety.”” In citing this opinion, Sir Roderick explained how 
the obscurity had been gradually cleared away by the application of 
modern geology, as based upon the succession of organic remains, and 
then proceeded to indicate the accumulations of which the Alps were 
composed, and the changes or revolutions they had undergone, 
between the truly primeval days when the earliest recognizable 
animals were created, and the first glacial period in the history of 
the planet. 
The object being to convey in a popular manner clear ideas of 
the physical condition of these mountains at different periods, 
three long scene-paintings, prepared for the occasion, represented a 
portion of the chain at three distinct epochs. The first of these 
views of ancient nature exhibited the Alps as a long, low archi- 
pelago of islands, formed in great part out of the Silurian and older 
sediments which had been raised above the sea, when the lands bore 
the tropical vegetation of the carboniferous era. 
Stating that there were no relics in the Alps of the formations to 
which he had assigned the name of Permian, as marking the close of 
the primeval or palzozoic age, Sir Roderick rapidly reviewed the facts 
gathered together by many geologists from all quarters of the globe, 
and maintained that they unequivocally sustained the belief, that 
there had been a succession of creations from lower to higher types 
of life, in ascending from inferior to superior formations. He care- 
fully, however, noted the clear distinction between such a creed, as 
‘founded on the true records of creation, and the theory of transmu- 
tation of species; a doctrine put forth in the popular work entitled 
the ‘‘ Vestiges of Creation,” and from which he entirely dissented. 
In the second painting (an immense lapse of time having occurred) 
No, 3. D 
