1869.] The Scientific Year. 11 



two well-trained experimentalists and philosophers, leaves us at the 

 end exactly where we were at the beginning. " Going back to the 

 earhest forms of created matter " is launching a frail bark at once 

 into all the doubts and difficulties of the nebular hypotheses and 

 cosmical fancies ; — it is plunging into a dark dreamland, in which 

 there is ample room and verge enough for the play of the most 

 volant and erratic imagination, but from which we are not likely to 

 gather any guiding truths. As exercises for well-trained minds, 

 who desire something, as the phrase goes, " to break upon," such 

 speculations are all very well. But if the same mental labour — the 

 same chemical skill — had been bestowed on the things of to-day, 

 instead of on the speculative conditions of the beginning, which 

 can never be determined, the world would have reaped an ad- 

 vantage which is now exceedingly problematical. From Chemical 

 Geology it is but a step to Geology itself. The year has not 

 produced any discovery of great novelty, but it has given evidence 

 of the industry of our geologists. The discovery of Eozoon in the 

 Laurentian rocks of Canada was of great interest. One of the most 

 important discoveries recently made in Palaeontological Science is 

 analagous with it. It is the detection of what appears to be the 

 remains of a terrestrial flora, in certain Swedish rocks of Lower 

 Cambrian age — the supposed equivalents of our Longmynd rocks. 

 A peculiar interest attaches to this discovery, inasmuch as it carries 

 back the appearance of terrestrial vegetation upon the earth's 

 surface through a vast interval of time, no land plants having 

 pre'sdously been known older than the Upper Ludlow beds. The 

 Swedish fossils now discovered appear to be the stems and long 

 parallel-veined leaves of monocotyledonous plants, somewhat allied 

 to the grasses and rushes of the present day. These plants 

 apparently grew on the margin of shallow waters, and were buried 

 in sand and silt. Although it is probable that several species and 

 even genera may occur in the sandstone blocks which have been 

 examined, they are provisionally included in a single species, to 

 which the name of Eophyton Limia^aum has been given. Eophyton, 

 therefore, stands by the side of Eozoon — the one being, in the 

 present state of our knowledge, the earliest land plant, as the other 

 is the earliest animal organism. Our Chronicles will give the 

 details of this interesting discovery, which cannot find a place 

 in a sketch of yearly progress. Eeference to these important 

 records — notes for the future historian of the progress of 

 scientific knowledge — will show that many questions of consider- 

 able importance to the future of geological science are being 

 discussed with much earnestness. In most cases a decision can 

 only be arrived at after the most cautious examination of extensive 

 districts of country. It is to be regretted that in some of the 

 discussions which liavc during the year excited attention, there has 



