1866. | Geology. 5933 
life with the modifications which have taken place in the crust of 
the earth, he summed up by observing that “the great principle 
remains of a succession of life which shows a method of progress— 
the old disappearing and the new coming in; that the breaks in 
continuity have a close connection with unconformability of strata ; 
that there never has been universally over the world any complete 
destruction of life; that the succession of existences has gone on in 
regular order and sequence; but that we have lost a great number 
of the records—whole chapters, whole books—by the immense 
disturbances in the earth’s crust. Putting all things together, we 
are pointed to the conclusion that all these changes have been so 
slow and gradual, that to the occupants of the old time, if they had 
had reason to observe, everything would seem to go on in the same 
slow, steady, and apparently undisturbed manner in which they 
appear to us to go on now; and if this be true, instead of having 
recourse to unusual catastrophic action to explain what is seen to 
have resulted, it all resolves itself into the process of time,—the effect 
produced in long spaces of time by small causes which were accu- 
mulative, and so were more than equal to all the unusual destructive 
forces which were attributed to the igneous rocks, which latter, 
with all other rocks, yielded to those causes which have brought 
about the astonishing changes which the world has so visibly 
undergone, resulting in the present physical geology and geography 
of the earth’s surface.” 
Though the number of papers sent in was smaller than that of 
several immediately preceding years, and though none of them con- 
tained an announcement so revolutionary as that made at the Bath 
Meeting of the discovery of organic remains in the “ Azoic” rocks, 
the supply was so large as to render it necessary for the Section to 
sit more than once long beyond the prescribed hour, and the quality 
betokened steady and general progress and occasionally drew an 
audience sufficient to fill the very large room in which the Section 
was located. 
Mons. Pierre de Tchihatchef, a distinguished Russian traveller, 
gave in excellent English an interesting account of “ Hight Years’ 
Researches in Asia Minor,” where, entirely at his own expense, he 
had journeyed over 21,000 miles, and had occupied himself in various 
branches of scientific research, especially geology and botany. 
In their “Second Report on the Geology of St. David’s, Pem- 
brokeshire,” Messrs. Hicks and Salter stated that the rocks of the 
district are divisible, in ascending order, into the Harlech, Menevian, 
Ffestiniog, Tremadoc, and Arenig or Skiddaw groups, the whole 
being crowned with the Llandeilo beds; that about 65 or 70 new 
species of animals had been found, peculiar to the district; that the 
Harlech or lowest group have a passage downwards into the central 
